About Us
Denim Coffee is a Pennsylvania specialty coffee roaster with coffee shops in Carlisle, Chambersburg and Harrisburg, PA.
We are passionate about quality coffee, so working with coffee is a pleasure. It is our mission to roast and brew with excellence to showcase the coffee's origin and efforts of the farmers as we supply individuals and businesses with delicious coffee.
-Matt Ramsay, Head Roaster & Founder
To friends and family of Founder and Head Roaster Matt Ramsay, it was never a question of "if" he would start a coffee company, but merely a question of when. A question which was finally answered in December of 2011 when Mosaic Coffee Company began roasting its first batch of coffee beans in a small space at a local Arts Collective in Shippensburg PA. After many lessons learned, millions of beans roasted, a huge investment of time and hustle, and a name change, Denim Coffee Company is roasting its best coffees yet, providing stunning coffees to wholesale partners and retail customers across the U.S.
Denim's backbone and northern star has always been Matt Ramsay's passion and zeal for roasting and serving great coffee; a passion whose roots date back to Matt's days studying at Shippensburg University, when he first began experimenting with roasting via a humble counter-top roaster he had setup in his dorm.
After graduation, Matt and his wife Kristin went to work at a coffee shop in the small town of Huntington, PA. There he and his wife had the opportunity to develop their coffee expertise and steep themselves in the culture of a coffee shop hinged around serving beautifully crafted coffees and cultivating a welcoming space for relationships to flourish outside of work and family. After several years it became overwhelmingly clear that the natural progression for Matt's curiosity and drive to bring incredible coffees to others meant launching his own coffee roasting business and that the place to do it was the home of his Alma Mater, Shippensburg.
At first glance Shippensburg, a small town in rural central Pennsylvania may seem an unlikely home to a startup coffee roaster, yet the character of the town has shaped and supported the growth of Denim Coffee Company in curiously becoming ways. Shippensburg, almost unintentionally, serves as a bridge between people's, cultures, and ideologies; a role that one can sense as they wander through the modern Mayberry of a town. From bantering locals, to corporate big-shots; tractors and horse-n-buggies, to soccer mom minivans; all embraced by an air of small town warmth and the certain electricity of ambition and anxiety emitted 8 months out of the year from university students. Coffee as a drink, an art form, and a subculture serves similarly as a bridge where cultures, ideas, worldviews, and both public and intimate moments can be shared in a supportive and welcoming environment. Almost as a surprise unto itself, Shippensburg has provided just the sort of fertile social soil to allow Denim Coffee Company to grow.
The company's roots extend much farther than its physical location and history, as the company takes an intentionally holistic approach in the way they go about the coffee business. Denim's view of the coffee it sources, roasts, and distributes to consumers is firmly grounded in a deep respect for the farmers who grow the coffee. It's the farmers who expectantly cultivate, meticulously care for, and exhaustingly harvest the coffees that are responsible for its quality. Denim's role is to then honor their efforts by showcasing the beauty and character of each bean through the roast. This is done not by roasting dark roasts like those of major coffee chains that destroy much of the coffee's natural sweetness and character for the sake of mass production , but rather by roasting each individual coffee uniquely. In this way both producer and consumer are best served and honored through Denim's work.