Where Expertise and Excellence Meet A Great Value
As a family-run business, we here at Nicholas Coffee & Tea Co. don’t just know our customers—we love them. That’s why we work so hard to offer over 100 different coffees—each of impeccable quality—at prices we know our customers appreciate.
Based in Pittsburgh for over 100 years, our family-run business still craft-roasts our beans on-site, bringing a personal touch to customers all over the world. But that’s just the beginning.
Here’s the journey our coffee takes from
farm to cup.
Selection
Jordan Nicholas carefully curates our coffee selection, ordering from origins around the globe.
Delivery
The coffee arrives, stacked in burlap sacks on a tractor-trailer. We unload it by hand, bringing it down a ramp into the lower-level storage facility.
Transport to Roaster
When it’s time to roast, a bucket elevator takes the coffee beans up a chute to the ground-floor roasting facility. There, the beans drop directly into the roaster that was installed in the shop in 1957, by second-generation owner Gus Nicholas.
Craft Roasting
Our craft-roasting experts monitor the roasting process, making sure the beans are roasted to just the right shade and level of intensity.
Cooling and Storing
Once roasted, the beans go into a cooling cart. When they’re sufficiently cool, we transport them into storage bins for our most popular origins and blends—Colombian, Northern Italian, My Wife’s Blend, and a Decaf Blend. Our specialty roasts go into smaller storage bags, or into our vintage coffee bins in the storefront to be sold or served to our customers.
Flavoring
If coffee is being flavored, the beans are placed in a spinner with a liquid flavor concentrate, then spun to absorb the coating.
Packaging
Once the beans have been roasted and cooled, they are ready to be packaged for retail, wholesale, and online orders. We have a lower-level, form-and-fill packaging machine; the beans drop down a chute from our ground floor roasting facility into the packaging machine where pillow packs are filled with coffee.
Retail
Our employees prepare the beans by hand per the customer’s request—whole bean or ground for specific brewing machines.
For the most part, coffee plants are grown in a tropical cloud forest—and we don’t have those in Pittsburgh. But since every other step of the coffee process, from roasting to packaging, is done on-site in our one-stop-shop facility, Nicholas Coffee & Tea Co. is able to keep our operating costs lower than our competition, and pass on those savings to our customers. It’s how you get gourmet coffee at reasonable prices. And we’ll drink a cup of coffee to that!
Below are our four most popular coffees.
Come by our shop and try one of them for yourself!
Colombian Supremo
A blend of three different Colombian Arabica varieties, this medium roast has a classic Colombian profile—chocolatey, fruity, and nutty. It’s a perfect everyday morning coffee.
Northern Italian
The base for all our espresso drinks, this medium-to-dark roast makes a delicious drip coffee as well. Smoother than a dark roast, it’s very popular with our restaurant customers.
My Wife’s Blend
All our flavored coffees are made with this versatile, delicious blend. Mild and medium-bodied, it’s a foolproof choice for a true coffee-lover.
Decaf
We use the same, superstar bean for our decaf drip, any of our flavored decaf coffees, and specialty decaf drinks at our coffee bar.