Like all smart dealers, Jones Coffee Roasters got me started on their product when I was just a kid. They sucked me in with a freebie, and now I’m hooked.
As a Westridge 7th grader reveling in the heady freedom of being allowed to walk to South Pas after school, I found Jones’ after school student special—a free scoop of ice cream with purchase of a drink—irresistible. Over the years, my middle school love affair with Jones has deepened and matured as my caffeine cravings have blossomed: I came for the ice cream and stayed for the coffee.
Which is delicious. Jones boasts an LA Times award-winning French Roast and brews up the best dirty chai latte in town. But it’s the welcoming warmth, kindness, and commitment to community at Jones that keeps me coming back over and over.
Despite looking nothing like my house, there’s something about Jones’s funky, eclectic aesthetic that feels as comfortable to me as my own kitchen. In South Pas, a higgledy-piggledy staircase leads upstairs to a loft space where multicolored linoleum squares cover the floor, and charmingly mismatched tables and chairs are just right for either coffee and conversation or coffee and contemplation. Old chairs—the inspiration for Jones’s logo—hang from the ceiling at both the South Pasadena and Raymond Avenue stores. The “Hut Drive-Thru” on Arroyo Parkway rocks Jones’s signature color palette: a rainbow crazy quilt of turquoise, red, orange, hot pink, yellow, and lime green that feels like a visual hug.
Even the ambient noise at Jones sounds cozy and reassuring. The clink of glasses, whoosh of the espresso machine, happy chatter, and tunes from the always-cool house playlist blend into the perfect soundtrack for studying, hanging out, and even conducting official Spyglass interviews.
Recently, I sat down with Chuck Jones, co-founder and co-owner of Jones Coffee Roasters, at the Raymond Avenue mothership to get the scoop (ice cream pun sort of intended) on how community can grow up around coffee, how a women-owned-and-operated family business going back five generations has proved that kindness to the planet and people yields great coffee, and that the guy who runs Jones Coffee has a really dope soul.
Reed D.: First off, I love the community vibe here at Jones. You are always finding new ways to bring people together here, whether it’s by showcasing local artists and musicians or partnering with other local businesses. What’s your vision for the role that Jones Coffee can play in the community?
Chuck Jones: I went on this tour through Europe in the ’90s and just visited coffee houses. We went to Vienna, Amsterdam, Germany, Italy, and France, and a lot of them were over 100 years old, so it was really cool, right? The common thread was that all of these coffee houses were blank canvases for the community… A lot of the stuff that we do here is giving space for the people that are coming in to show themselves—through music, through art, or just showing themselves through hanging out and chatting with each other, or reading a book. We don’t have Wi-Fi, so we try to encourage people to be more analog.
RD: I read on your website that your logo, a chair, is a nod to the community that formed around your coffee in the early days of your business?
CJ: We used to be up the street at 537 South Raymond, and we were just doing wholesale roasting coffee… and we sold beans retail. People would ask us, “Well, can you make me a drink?”… So then what happened was people started bringing their own chairs in, and the chairs were all different, like that one’s a ladder back, that one’s a harp back, and they’re talking to each other. So I call them “talking chairs…” And then as the chairs started to break down or whatever, they were cool, and I didn’t want to throw them out, so I started hanging them on the ceiling.
RD: When I was doing background research for this article, I discovered that Jones Coffee Roasters has family roots going back five generations to your great and great-great-grandmothers, who founded a coffee farm in the 1870s in Guatemala! Talk about the original women-owned business! Can you tell me a little bit about the role women have played in your business over the years?
CJ: Both sides of our family, my dad’s family, the Joneses, and my mom’s family, were big champions of social justice, and the women on both sides were the backbone… It was my great-great-grandmother in Guatemala, who actually built the farm. She was a baker and somebody owed her money. They gave her a deed to this land that was far, far away, and she traveled there by horseback with a group of people from the village that she was from. And, you know, we’ve been running the farm for 140 years.
RD: I know that sustainability practices are really important to Jones. What do you do to promote sustainability both locally and in Guatemala?
CJ: [Y]ou can’t produce excellent, great tasting coffee under oppressive conditions consistently. So if you’re a good steward to the land, you’re good to the people—you pay them well, offer them good medical benefits and education benefits—then you’re going to produce great quality product. So, it’s kind of inherent to the process. We are also looking to reduce, like we offer bring your own cup discounts and stuff like that. A lot of that reduction actually makes more economic sense in the bigger scheme, just like in Guatemala, when we’re producing stuff, it makes economic sense that when we have byproducts from the processing of the coffee that we use it for compost in the fields. I think that another sustainable part, also down at the farm, is that we built schools… Paying people more is one thing, but giving them an education is even better… So, you know, there’s that element to it, the quality of life, that I think all plays into the same sustainability here.
The cups of love that Jones Coffee Roasters pours everyday are positive proof that beans grown with kindness taste better.
Jones Coffee Roasters locations include the South Pas location at 1006 Mission Street, South Pasadena, CA 91030; the Raymond location at 693 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105; and the Hut Drive-Thru located at 680 South Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA 91105.
