Cosmopolis Coffee Brings Colombian Roots and Portland Roasting to NE Broadway

Cosmopolis Coffee’s new cafe in Portland puts its roasting program and Colombian coffee sourcing at the center of the business. Founder Conor Carrigan opened at 2005 NE Broadway, taking over a 460-square-foot space where Saint Simon Coffee served the neighborhood for more than 12 years before closing in June.

Cosmopolis Coffee in Portland, Oregon. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.

The cafe is a new retail step for a company that began selling coffee online in 2023 and later expanded to farmers markets. Carrigan describes the shop as a place to serve the neighborhood while drawing coffee drinkers from across the city. The bright interior, with Mexican terracotta tile, white quartz counters and a white La Marzocco Linea, sets a clean backdrop for a deliberately coffee led operation. Cafe manager Shannon Carlson and the baristas run service alongside pastries.

A roasting business built through shared spaces

Carrigan roasts Cosmopolis coffees on a 10-kilo-capacity Proaster at Buckman Coffee Factory, a shared production facility. His route there began at the Curate Coffee Collective shared roastery. After Curate closed, he joined a private shared setup with former Curate roasters, then moved to Buckman.

Cosmopolis Coffee Founder Conor Carrigan. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.

Those shared spaces gave Carrigan a network of peers and advisers as he built his skills. At Buckman he met educator and consultant Mike Nelson, whom he says shares his approach to coffee and business. Carrigan also works with consultant Darrin Daniel on cupping and quality control, and credits educator Adam S. Carpenter with teaching him the foundations of roasting and cupping.

For Carrigan, Portland’s roasting community has made the transitions between facilities valuable in their own right. He says each experience brought useful lessons and that the roasters he met were supportive. That network has helped shape a small company whose production, quality work and cafe service remain closely connected.

Colombian coffee, personal history

Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.

Colombian coffees currently account for most of the menu: three regular offerings and a decaf sourced through importers and suppliers including Caravela Coffee, Forest Coffee and Shared Source. An Ethiopian coffee is on its way, with more origins expected as the program expands.

That focus reflects Carrigan’s family ties. Born and raised in Ireland to an American mother and an Irish-Colombian father, he traces part of his interest in coffee to his great-uncle Rafael Parga Cortés, who operated the La Montaña farm in Colombia’s Tolima region. The farm was sold in the 1980s.

Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.

Coffee also brings together several chapters of Carrigan’s working life. He spent time in Switzerland in the cotton division of commodities trading company Ecom, later ran a trading business based in Latvia, then returned to Ireland before moving into law and human rights work in Colombia. In the United States, he practiced law and worked on housing issues in New York City, followed by political campaign work across several cities and states. A visit to his sister in Portland eventually led him to settle there.

He says coffee appealed because it connected commodity trading with Colombia, offered hands-on work in roasting, and created the possibility of building meaningful relationships with producers. The business name, Cosmopolis, refers to a city shaped by many peoples and cultures—a fitting idea for a cafe whose first menu leans on Carrigan’s Colombian connections while leaving room for other origins. As that selection grows, the shop’s challenge will be to keep its sourcing story as tangible as the coffee it serves.

Cosmopolis Coffee is located at 2005 NE Broadway in Portland, Oregon.