What is Press Coffee?
Press Coffee is the Valley’s homegrown specialty roaster done right. Steve Kraus and his wife, Tram Mai, opened it in 2008, a few months before the recession, which is the kind of timing that either kills a coffee company or teaches it discipline. Press got the discipline. It roasts every day at its own roastery on 32nd Street in Phoenix, and in 2024 it went one step further than nearly any American café chain: it bought a coffee farm on the slopes of Barú Volcano in western Panama.
The Scottsdale Quarter café is the North Scottsdale workhorse. It sits in Building F at 15257 N Scottsdale Rd, the line moves, the baristas pull consistent shots, and the hours are the longest Press keeps: 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7 to 6 on Sunday, when most Press cafés close at 4. The drip is the Estate coffee from the Panama farm. The beans on the shelf were roasted days ago, not months.
It is not a destination brunch and does not pretend to be. It is the refuel stop after a morning on the trails and the meeting spot for the Kierland office crowd, and in coffee, being the reliable one is the highest compliment available.
Ordering and timing
What to order. Start with the drip, because it is the farm: Press serves its Panama Estate coffee as the drip at every café. Espresso drinks are well made and consistent; the single-origin coffees rotate. Press releases limited single-origins on the 1st and 15th of every month, so those are the days to ask what is new.
Buy beans here. Press roasts daily, so the whole-bean bags at the counter are fresh in a way grocery-store coffee rarely is, and the roast dates are printed. Subscriptions take 5 percent off if you drink a lot of it.
When to go. Weekday mornings are fast; the Quarter’s office crowd comes in waves before 9. Weekend mornings bring shoppers and the post-hike crowd. The 7 p.m. close (6 on Sunday) makes this the Press for an afternoon cup, which matters in a town where most good coffee shuts at 3 or 4.
Order ahead. Press runs online ordering for pickup, which is the move on a Saturday.
The other Scottsdale Press cafés. Four in all:
- Scottsdale Quarter, 15257 N Scottsdale Rd, Building F, Suite 160: 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 7 to 6 Sunday.
- McCormick Ranch, 8300 N Hayden Rd, E107, at Mercado del Lago: 6:30 to 4, Sunday from 7. Walk it to the lake.
- Raintree, 8605 E Raintree Dr, Suite 190, for the Airpark: 6:30 to 4, Sunday from 7.
- Scottsdale Waterfront, 7135 E Camelback Rd, #145, in Old Town: 6:30 to 5, Sunday 7 to 5.
Around the Quarter. Scottsdale Quarter has the original True Food Kitchen, Dominick’s and Eddie V’s, and Kierland Commons is across Scottsdale Road. For the rest of the city’s coffee, see our coffee shop guide.
A Phoenix roaster that bought a mountain
Press belongs to the Valley’s specialty-coffee generation. Through the 2000s, coffee in Scottsdale meant resort lobbies, chains and a few independents such as Village Coffee Roastery in McCormick Ranch. Then the third wave arrived: single origins, roast dates, baristas who know the farm. In Scottsdale the wave produced Cartel in Old Town’s arts blocks, the cafe-and-taproom hybrid Sip, and Press in the north, and for many people Press is the brand that made a serious coffee program feel normal in a mall.
The founders started it in 2008, just ahead of the recession, which kept the company lean. By the company’s own count it has opened 19 Valley locations over about 17 years and now runs roughly a dozen cafés from Tempe and Chandler to the Biltmore, all supplied from the 32nd Street roastery. Each year a Day of Giving sends a day’s profits to a local nonprofit; Press says the total has passed $200,000 with its sponsors.
The 2024 farm purchase is the part that sets Press apart. The estate is 70 hectares in Panama’s Volcán Valley, between 1,800 and 2,300 meters on the western side of Barú, in soil built from the volcano’s last eruptions. That is serious coffee country. Owning a farm lets a roaster control a coffee from the tree to the cup, which is why Press now separates its own coffee into Estate (the everyday drip) and quarterly Reserve releases.
The Scottsdale Quarter café is where most North Scottsdale people meet the company. The Quarter itself opened in 2009 as a wager on high-end retail and was rescued, in the shopping-center sense, by its restaurants; a local roaster holding prime ground there from the early years was part of that argument.
Honest assessment: it is a well-run chain café in a shopping center, and if you want a slow, quirky neighborhood coffeehouse, look elsewhere. But the coffee is roasted by people who now grow some of it, the hours are generous, and the beans at the counter are as fresh as anything you can buy in Scottsdale.