Gambit Coffee Roasters?

Gambit Coffee Roasters began the way most good ideas do — with a cup of coffee, a healthy dose of curiosity, and the question: can I make this better? Perfecting my brews led me deeper down the rabbit hole and eventually had me wondering if roasting my own coffee would be interesting. Before long, I was gutting and rewiring popcorn poppers, manually drawing roast curves, and spending money with reckless abandon on my new “hobby.”

Through all of this, I discovered that coffee isn’t just something to wake up with. It’s a living, breathing craft shaped by where it’s grown, how it’s processed, roasted, brewed, and enjoyed. Coffee is wildly complex, yet it still manages to be comforting — like coming home.

Second only to my love of coffee is my love of all types of gaming — video, tabletop, card, competitive, old school, new school, roleplaying… you name it. That’s primarily why I chose the name Gambit Coffee Roasters. A nod to chess — the OG game — where a gambit is a risky move made in hopes of gaining an advantage. It’s also a reflection of the leap I took into roasting and my choice to pursue something I truly love.

That lesson — to love what you do — I learned from my father, albeit a little too late. A forester and conservationist, he spent his life improving Maine’s majestic wilderness. His love for what he did never wavered, right up to the day he passed. At his wake, seeing all the lives he’d touched, I began to understand that loving what you do doesn’t just change you — it ripples outward and touches everyone around you.

So, this is my gambit: to roast coffee that sparks curiosity, invites conversation, and maybe brightens someone’s day along the way. From our small corner of Maine, we roast for the curious — the home brewers, the coffee geeks, and the folks who simply want their morning cup to be a bit more special. Around here, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we do take our coffee seriously — making sure every roast draws out the best in every bean and shows just how amazing coffee can be.