We are the Thornton family.

We are Paul Thornton and Rachel Thornton Verhaalen, wholesale coffee roasters in Beaverton, Oregon. We are also a family—a tribe, even—born and raised in and around Portland. We grew up working in the specialty coffee industry. We have formed this family business in order to share our knowledge and passion for coffee with our customers.

We’d be thrilled if you’d join us.

Thornton Family Coffee Roasters was founded in 2017 by Paul Thornton, who started his coffee career in 1982 working for Coffee Bean International in Portland, Oregon, as their Roastmaster. Over the last four decades Paul has accomplished an amazing amount throughout his career in the coffee industry – he is a Specialty Coffee Association Former President, a Roasters Guild founder and longtime member, and a nationally recognized coffee Roastmaster and green coffee buyer. Paul is a certified coffee taster and trainer through the Specialty Coffee Association, and has participated in over 10 international tasting panels. After 30 years working for CBI, Paul decided to part ways from the industrial coffee world to start a small family business with his daughter Rachel.

Rachel Thornton Verhaalen is the co-founder of Thornton Family Coffee Roasters. She is an expert Barista, trained extensively in coffee retail cafes. Rachel began her career in coffee in 2003 working in warehouse coffee production, and later moved into retail cafe management and training. She lived in Hawaii with her husband and daughter from 2012 to 2016 as an operations manager and coffee producer of Kona coffee before returning to Oregon to work with her dad Paul on opening their family coffee roasting business.

Our deep roots in the coffee scene have helped us understand the industry. Our focus and goal is to supply coffee of unparalleled quality and educate our wholesale and retail customers who wish to be a part of our efforts to offer an excellent and memorable coffee experience.

Grounded in our rich coffee history, we are continually expanding our passion within the coffee world and pride ourselves in offering a wide variety of high quality, solid tasting coffees.

Today, we have the pleasure of employing seven of Paul’s 8 children (Rachel’s siblings), Paul’s sister, and our like-family friend Sam at our roasting shop in Beaverton, Oregon. They are baristas, assistants, managers, delivery drivers, and roasters, all contributing to our family business and learning more about coffee every day. We are excited to share our journey with our customers, and look forward to continuing to share our fun and passion in what we love to do most – roast coffee!