In 2016, Lem Butler won the United States Barista Championship in Atlanta. Kyle Ramage coached him, and Butler went on to place fourth at the World Barista Championship in Dublin.
The next year the two men swapped roles. Ramage competed, Butler coached, and Ramage won the 2017 US title. He represented the country in Seoul and finished sixth in the world.
Then they opened a coffee shop in Wake Forest, North Carolina, population roughly 40,000 at the time.
How that actually happened
The version where two champions survey the American coffee map and strategically select a Raleigh suburb is not what happened. The real version is more opportunistic and more interesting.
Ramage had been consulting, training, and doing equipment work for a small Wake Forest roaster called Back Alley Coffee Roasters since it opened around 2015. After the 2017 US Barista Championship, Back Alley’s owner offered to sell Ramage the business. Ramage took the offer to Butler. They found investment capital, formed Black & White Coffee LLC, and bought an already-operating roastery with two retail cafes attached.
Butler described it at the time as the café dream arriving in ready-made form. They spent the following months upgrading equipment and procedures at both bars while transitioning the branding away from Back Alley. All of this happened while Ramage was simultaneously training for the world championship in Korea, which he characterized to Daily Coffee News with considerable understatement as more difficult than he would have liked.
The Brooks Street cafe was the first one. Black & White Coffee Roasters still operates it at 314 Brooks Street, and it served as the original roasting space before the company outgrew it.
The philosophy fits on a bumper sticker
Their stated line is that if it tastes good, it is good.
That sounds throwaway until you consider what most specialty coffee sounds like. The category has spent two decades building vocabulary, hierarchy, and a fairly effective wall between people who know what a washed Ethiopian is and people who just want a good cup on the way to work. Butler and Ramage came out of the most technical corner of that world, the competition stage, where the entire exercise is demonstrating mastery to judges.
Their business went the other direction. The company’s own framing is that they were inspired by the coffee they encountered at the competitive level and wanted to make it as widely available as possible. Three core values, listed on their site: service, community, excellence. Service comes first.
In practice that means the bar staff will meet you wherever you are. You can order a latte with oat milk and a flavored syrup and nobody will make a face. You can also ask what came off the Loring this week and get a real answer.
What to actually order
The roasting happens on a 15-kilo Loring, which is a substantial machine for a company this size and was part of the original Back Alley purchase.
If you have never had coffee at this level, the useful move is to ask for a pour-over of whatever single origin is currently on. Tell the barista what you like in broad terms, sweet, fruity, chocolatey, nutty, and let them route you. The lineup rotates because the sourcing rotates, and Ramage has spent years building relationships with producers who experiment with processing methods.
If you want something less committal: the espresso is excellent, the cold brew is excellent, and the pastry case is small and good rather than large and mediocre.
For beans to take home, they roast Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and orders placed before midnight Eastern go out on the next roast day. Fresher than anything you will find on a grocery shelf.
What changed in 2025
Two things worth knowing, because local coverage tends to skip them.
In April 2025, Black & White was acquired by FairWave Specialty Coffee Collective, a Kansas City-based group whose portfolio includes Messenger Coffee, Spyhouse, Anodyne, and Ceremony. Black & White became the twelfth brand under that umbrella and the collective’s first North Carolina roaster. The acquisition came less than a month after Black & White hosted the 2025 US Barista Championship.
The second thing: Lem Butler left. The co-founder and 2016 US champion departed as part of the transaction. In the announcement he said he was proud of the community the company had built and confident the team would keep succeeding. Ramage stayed on to lead the business, with a stated focus on operations and expanding in Raleigh.
Whether that changes the coffee is a fair question and one worth watching. So far the roasting schedule, the sourcing approach, and the Brooks Street cafe have all continued.
Why Wake Forest got a coffee town out of it
Black & White now runs three locations: Wake Forest, downtown Raleigh inside the Videri Chocolate Factory, and RDU Airport in Terminal 2. Their beans turn up in serious home-brewing forums and get shipped nationally.
But the flagship is a cafe on a side street in a town most of the coffee world had never heard of. That fact reset local expectations. Wake Forest now has multiple coffee businesses operating at a level a town this size has no obvious right to, and a customer base that knows the difference between a competent latte and a great one.
That is what happens when two national champions decide the shop they want to run is the one already sitting in your neighborhood.
Black & White Coffee Roasters, 314 Brooks Street, Wake Forest. blackwhiteroasters.com