George Howell Coffee

George Howell Coffee is a specialty roaster founded in 2004 by George Howell, operating out of a roastery on School Street in Acton, Massachusetts. Howell, now 81, is widely credited as one of the architects of the American specialty coffee movement, and his current company is the second act of a career that began in 1975 when he opened The Coffee Connection in Harvard Square — one of the earliest cafes in the country to champion single-origin beans, light roasting, and a wine-like vocabulary for evaluating drip coffee.

The Coffee Connection's run ended when Starbucks acquired it in the early 1990s. (A footnote that has followed Howell ever since: the Frappuccino was invented at The Coffee Connection before the acquisition.) He spent years consulting and advocating before relaunching under his own name in 2004. George Howell Coffee represents a return to the philosophy he developed in Harvard Square — that coffee, sourced and roasted with enough care, needed no augmentation. His daughter Jenny Howell is now part of the operation, visible in the company's media presence.

Howell's sourcing focus runs toward traceable, high-scoring lots, with some offerings reaching $24 per cup — a price point NBC10 Boston covered in early 2026 in the context of rare harvest coffee. He is also a proponent of freezing both green and roasted coffee as a quality-preservation technique, a practice he has championed publicly through outlets like Perfect Daily Grind. The roastery in Acton handles production and direct-to-consumer shipping across the continental United States.