Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting Gets Going in Georgia

Howard Bryman | September 9, 2025

Inside the new Athens Coffee Holding cafe next to the company’s roastery in Athens, Georgia. All images courtesy of Athens Holding & Roasting Company.

Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting Company opened its first cafe alongside its roastery last month, courtesy of the team behind popular local shop Sips Espresso Café.

The cozy new cafe occupies a fully remodeled 1,000-square-foot 1930s house that was part of a residential area for workers at a nearby denim factory.

Guests can now sit in jute coffee-sack-upholstered chairs inside the historic home or on the front porch, while the commercial roastery and baking kitchen operate in adjoining rooms.

“The building was ready for the bulldozer,” Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting Co-Founder Quintin Robison told Daily Coffee News.

The house, one of only three remaining from the original worker housing, had been remodeled after a 1990s fire and used as rental property. Said Robison,”There wasn’t much to save architecturally, so we had a fresh slate inside.”

Meanwhile, the former denim factory down the block has been converted into a mixed-use complex housing a brewery, restaurants, hotel and offices, drawing foot traffic to the area.

Sweets baked fresh daily are displayed in a pastry case at the Athens Coffee counter, while through a doorway customers can peek into the adjoining room where head roaster Ethan Mullenax runs a copper-clad 12-kilo US Roaster Corp machine.

Some of those coffees make their way to Sips Espresso Café, which Robison and his wife and partner, Lindsay Powell, took over in 2014 and converted to a multiroaster cafe. The Normaltown shop continues to carry roasts from multiple companies, including local standbys Jittery Joe’s and 1,000 Faces.

Mullenax leads green coffee sourcing and profile development. He said he’s been leaning into extended development times to achieve more body and mouthfeel in coffees like the Costa Rica Tarrazú that’s used for Sips’ house espresso and the Normaltown blend.

“Our core goal is to create delicious specialty coffee that’s accessible both in flavor and price to the average daily coffee drinker,” Mullenax said.

Sips Espresso Café

While Robison was initially inspired by the old-timey sound of a “holding company” — like those depicted in old Western movies — Athens Coffee Holding & Roasting is indeed designed as an umbrella company under which numerous brands might operate.

“I don’t want a Sips Espresso Cafe on every corner like a Starbucks or Dutch Bros. I wanted something I could expand but have each location be its own standalone, with its own look, feel, and culture,” said Robison. “The next project I really want to do is to buy real train coaches, dining cars and bar cars, and remodel them into an elegant cafe — think the Orient Express, 1930s style, Gilded Age, maybe an Asian bullet train car. I think that would be fun to operate.”