8/18/2026 A Difficult Update: BJ’s is more than a café to us. It is our family’s livelihood, the livelihood of our employees, and a place generations of customers have made part of their everyday lives. It has been the backdrop for first dates, morning routines, work meetings, friendships, celebrations, difficult conversations and countless cups of coffee shared between neighbors.
Now, for the first time in more than three decades, we do not know when we will be able to serve our community again.
Our longtime café recently experienced devastating flooding through no fault of our own. The damage requires extensive remediation and the removal of the majority of our counters, built-in fixtures and other property that is necessary to operate the café.
Although we did not cause this flooding, the terms of our lease place the responsibility for replacing our business property and rebuilding our tenant improvements largely on us. At the same time, we have lost the daily sales that support our employees, our family and the ordinary expenses of keeping BJ’s alive.
The timing could not be more difficult.
Before this happened, we had taken the biggest step of our lives by purchasing a building a few blocks west of our current café. That building was meant to become BJ’s permanent home. A place where our family business could finally have financial stability and continue serving Forest Grove for another generation.
We stretched ourselves financially to make that future possible. The income from our existing café was supposed to sustain our employees and help fund the transition into the new location. Instead, that income stopped overnight, and the resources intended for our future are now being pulled toward surviving the immediate crisis.
To everyone who has stopped at our counter, purchased our coffee, worked alongside us, shared a memory or made BJ’s part of your life: thank you.
We love this community. We love our employees. We love what BJ’s has meant to Forest Grove for more than three decades.
With your help, we hope this will not be the end of BJ’s Coffee Company's story but rather an extraordinarily difficult chapter before we open our doors again.
With all our gratitude,
Nathan and Lindsay Jo
BJ’s Coffee Company
We’ve got some big news…
BJ’s Coffee Company is moving!
Some of you may have already heard through the grapevine, but we wanted to share the news ourselves and fill you in on what’s happening.
For the past 34 years, BJ’s Coffee Company has called the Ballad Shopping Center home. While this move was not part of our original plan, circumstances beyond our control led us to make a big decision, one that will help secure the future of our business for years to come.
Whether you’ve been visiting us for decades or just recently discovered us, we hope you’ll join us on this next chapter.
BJ’s Coffee Company opened its first brick-and-mortar location in Forest Grove in 1992. Becky Jo (BJ) and Ken Palmer founded the company after returning to Becky’s hometown from Kona, Hawaii, with their three-year-old son, Nathan. Growing up on a coffee farm and around the coffee industry his entire life, Nathan eventually became the roaster for BJ’s Coffee in 2010. Around 2019, Nathan and his wife, Lindsay, took over the family business as Becky stepped into retirement.
Today, BJ’s remains a true family business. Nathan and Lindsay are now raising their own daughter, Aili Jo, who was born in 2022. At three and a half years old, she loves spending time at the café and roastery and has become the newest generation of the BJ’s Coffee story. As we make this move, we aren't just investing in our business, we're investing in our family and a future that we hope will continue serving Forest Grove for generations to come.
Like many small businesses, we’ve faced our share of challenges over the past several years. Between COVID regulations, rising operating costs, record-high coffee prices, import tariffs, and ongoing economic pressures, the coffee industry has not made things easy.
In December 2024, the shopping center where we have operated for more than three decades was sold to new ownership. As our lease renewal discussions began, we learned that maintenance fees tripled, any future capital improvements to the center would be funded by tenants, and that our rent would increase dramatically… more than double what we had previously been paying.
We explored every option available to us, including extensive lease negotiations and legal review, but ultimately determined that committing to those terms would put the long-term health of our business at risk. After searching for alternative locations in town and finding none that fit our needs, we decided to invest in ourselves and our future. Our goal was simple: to create a permanent home for BJ’s Coffee Company, where our future was no longer dependent on rising lease costs or decisions beyond our control. We decided that owning our own building would allow us to invest in improvements that benefit our customers, our staff, and the future of our business for generations to come.
So, at the end of May, we purchased the Cole Carter Building at the corner of 19th Avenue and Elm Street.
Many of you may recognize the building from its previous owners, Mike and Carol Olsen, and Olsen Bicycles, which served the community there for many years. We are honored to work alongside the businesses already in the building, become part of its history, and bring new life to this wonderful space. We are incredibly excited about the possibilities this new location offers and can't wait to share them with you.
The new space will require a significant buildout before we can open. Because the building has never housed a food and beverage business, we will be starting from scratch with plumbing, permitting, and all the infrastructure required to operate a café. This is our first full café buildout, and while the process will take time, we are already hard at work planning and designing the space. Our goal is to move as quickly as possible, though construction and permitting timelines can be unpredictable. We will continue to share updates and a more specific opening timeline as the project progresses. In the meantime, we remain open in our current location and look forward to serving you throughout the transition.
While our address will be changing, our commitment to Forest Grove and the community that has supported us for more than three decades remains exactly the same. This community has been at the heart of our story since day one, and we are excited to continue serving you in a new home just a few blocks away.
If you'd like to support us during this transition, the best thing you can do is keep stopping in for coffee, purchasing beans to brew at home, and sharing our story with friends and family. Every visit and every bag of coffee helps us move one step closer to opening our doors at the new location.
We have also been incredibly touched by the number of customers who have already offered to lend a hand with the buildout. As we move through the renovation process, there will be opportunities for community members to help with various projects. If you would like to be involved, please reply to this email with your contact information. Lindsay will keep a volunteer list and reach out as specific projects and scheduling needs arise.
Your support, whether it's through a cup of coffee, a kind word, or a few hours of helping hands, means more to us than we can express. We truly could not do this without our amazing community.
Thank you for supporting our family business over the past 34 years. Your encouragement, loyalty, and countless cups of coffee have helped make this next step possible. We can’t wait to welcome you into our new home and share the journey with you.
With gratitude,
Nathan & Lindsay Jo
BJ’s Coffee Company
