Boon Boona Coffee | Coffee Coffee Coffee — From the Heart of East Africa to Seattle

His Mother Has Always Roasted Coffee at Home. He Built a Business to Tell That Story to the World.

Efrem Fesaha grew up in Seattle’s White Center neighborhood in a home that always smelled like coffee. Not drip coffee from a machine — real coffee. His Eritrean mother roasted green beans in a pan, ground them by hand, and brewed them in a clay jebena. It wasn’t called a ceremony for nothing. Coffee, in their household, was how the family gathered. How the day began. How community was made.

In 2011, Efrem took a break from corporate life and traveled to Asmara, Eritrea. He went for rest. What he found changed everything. Asmara — shaped by decades of Italian colonial influence — is a city of cafes, roasters, and espresso bars. You smell the coffee before you arrive. You stay longer than you planned. You leave knowing something the rest of the world doesn’t.

He came home to Seattle — one of the world’s coffee capitals — and asked a simple question: how do you bridge those two worlds? The answer became Boon Boona Coffee.

Boon Boona means “Coffee Coffee Coffee” — boon is the word for coffee in Eritrea and parts of Kenya; boona is how it’s said in Ethiopia. Every detail of the brand is intentional: the logo draws from traditional Ethiopian iconography, the sourcing is exclusively from Africa, and the mission is built around shared prosperity.

Efrem opened his first café and roastery in downtown Renton in 2019 — after being rejected by multiple lenders, building his business plan through SCORE and the Washington Women’s Business Center, and securing a $100,000 SBA loan. Every obstacle became a credential.

Today, Boon Boona operates five locations across the greater Seattle area — Renton, Capitol Hill, the University of Washington Bookstore, Microsoft’s East Redmond campus, and the newly opened Overlook Walk location at Downtown Seattle’s Waterfront Park. The company roasts more than 100,000 pounds of coffee per year and sources beans exclusively from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, and across East Africa — with a deliberate focus on women-owned growers and underserved farming cooperatives.

In 2022, Efrem was named both Washington State Small Business Person of the Year and Pacific Northwest Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration — a national finalist from among thousands.

At Boon Boona, every cup is a connection: to the farmer who grew the beans, to the 1,000-year-old story of where coffee was born, and to the community that shows up when a Black-owned business opens its doors and says, everyone is welcome here.

Find Boon Boona Coffee on LookForBOB.com. Shop online, subscribe for single-origin African coffee deliveries, or visit a café near you.
boonboonacoffee.com | @boonboonacoffee