Lardera Coffee Roasters Opens 80,000 Square Foot Production Hub in New Jersey

For the past four years, Lardera Coffee Roasters has been a coffee company with a naming problem. Founded in 2022 as a division of online tea retailer Adagio Teas, Lardera built its catalog through contract roasting—partnering with other roasters while developing profiles and scaling volume. The “roaster” part of the name was more aspiration than description.

That changes now. The company has opened an 80,000-square-foot production facility in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with plans to bring all roasting in-house within weeks.

“We’ve waited a really long time to legitimize the ‘roaster’ in our name,” said Michael Cramer, Lardera’s founder and Adagio’s CEO.

The Setup

The East Rutherford facility centers on a 60-kilogram IMF roaster—a serious production machine from the Italian manufacturer known for precision and consistency at scale. Supporting the roaster are coffee silos with capacity for 20 tons of green beans, enough runway to keep production humming without constant restocking.

On the packaging side, Lardera installed an Effytec horizontal form, fill and seal machine for automating bag production. The company also operates Fuso equipment for steeped coffee bags and pour-over trays—formats that hint at where retail coffee is heading.

Nick Lin, previously a production manager at Adagio Teas, is leading the roasting operation. The move from tea to coffee isn’t as strange as it sounds: both involve sourcing from origin, understanding terroir, and developing flavor profiles through heat.

The Sourcing Model

Lardera inherited Adagio’s direct-trade philosophy, which means bypassing brokers and working directly with farmers. The company currently sources from Costa Rica’s Central Valley and Tarrazú regions, Peru’s Junín and Monobamba areas, Ethiopia’s Limu and Nensebo zones, and Guatemala’s Primavera region.

Product pages on their site feature farmer photos and profiles—the kind of supply chain transparency that’s become standard at specialty roasters but still rare at the production scale Lardera is entering.

The company also sells green coffee in quantities from 8 ounces to 152-pound wholesale orders, positioning itself as both a finished goods brand and a green coffee supplier.

Family Business

Lardera operates within Adagio’s brand family, which includes Masters Teas, Selefina Spices, and Adagio Bees. The parent company has spent two decades building an online direct-to-consumer operation for specialty tea—infrastructure that Lardera now leverages for coffee.

The model shows: Lardera offers 2-ounce sample sizes for customers testing new origins before committing to larger bags, alongside brewing equipment including Wilfa grinders and pour-over setups.

Why It Matters

The specialty coffee industry keeps adding roasters, but most new entrants start small—a 5kg Probat, a garage operation, a dream of scaling up someday. Lardera is doing it backward: building production capacity first, backed by the resources of an established e-commerce operation.

Cramer believes Lardera can achieve the market recognition its sister company Adagio built over 20 years. That’s ambitious for a four-year-old coffee brand, but 80,000 square feet and a 60kg roaster suggest they’re not just talking.

The East Rutherford facility is now operational and expected to complete its transition from contract roasting within weeks.