How on Earth did I, Ohori’s Coffee Roasters’ number one fan, not know that founder Susan Ohori learned at the feet of top-tier coffee god Alfred Peet—of the iconic Peet’s Coffee & Tea—in the leadup to the most beloved Santa Fe shop’s 1984 opening?
If you didn’t know, Peet also taught the people who’d go on to form a little company called Starbucks (which is really sad at this point, but something that emphasizes his impact and prowess when it comes to coffee), so clearly he knew what he was doing. In fact, according to current Ohori’s owner Tai Brinegar, after living in Berkeley in the ’70s, where she worked for and learned from Peet, Ohori relocated to Santa Fe and somehow managed to lure Peet to town to help her set up a then-new kind of coffee shop. This era of caffeination is widely if anecdotally known as the second wave of coffee; a sort of post-
Maxwell House period wherein coffee drinkers became more discerning and finer coffee beans and brews became more readily available around the world.
“As the story goes, Susan Ohori asked Alfred Peet to ship her Peet’s coffee for her new shop, but he said ‘no way,’ and that she was going to have to roast it herself. Then he came and physically helped her set up the roaster,” Brinegar says. “And we still have that same roaster he helped her purchase.”
Adam Ferguson
That roaster—an industrial rotating drum machine from German manufacturer Probat—today resides in a Midtown warehouse where roasters Sam Brinegar (also Tai’s husband and co-owner) and Christopher Strauss roast the beans to a satisfying, rich and most often darker level than your average nouveau coffee shop, which is pretty much the signature Ohori’s way. For the record? Darker often means less samey-tasting than the average third wave coffee fare—at least in my opinion, and I’ll die on that hill, too; the hill dedicated to how underdeveloped most neo coffee shops’ offerings taste. Today I’d always rather grab a cup at either Ohori’s location (1098 1/2 S St. Francis Drive; 505 Cerrillos Road, (505) 982-9692)
“Peet was European and came from this specialty coffee movement, and his roasting style was darker,” she explains. “When you’re roasting and the coffee bean opens and releases its water content, it’s called a crack—it makes a noise you can actually hear. A lot of third-wave coffee is removed from the roaster before or around the first crack, but we come from a darker roasting tradition, because that’s how Peet taught Susan Ohori to roast.”
Brinegar has become a bit of an expert on the topic of coffee since her parents Larry and Sharon Ayers bought Ohori’s from its founder in 2001. Larry had been a consultant and accountant for Ohori for some time by then; Tai started working at the shop in 2001; she and husband Sam officially took over the business in 2017; your old pal Alex has been stopping by near-daily since…well, since always.
To wit, Brinegar says, the company does at least two things differently from all other local shops: It sells more than 30 different specialty roasts and blends and it occupies a sort of middle space, or the proverbial third location—a place where one can be social or anti-social with a nice drink and not have to spend a ton of money. Of course, that doesn’t mean things haven’t changed some in the 41 years since Susan Ohori opened the doors. In 2025, prices per drink rose 5%. Ohori’s survived the pandemic thanks to its bulk mail order part of the business, but everything from the rising cost of cups to post-COVID inflation and the looming threat of tariffs from the Trump administration have taken a toll.
Adam Ferguson
“There are different ways coffee is priced, and the ways it is traded as a commodity affects prices in a coffee shop, even if most of the coffee we buy isn’t in the commodity market,” Brinegar says. “We’re buying relatively small amounts of coffee, but you’ll have large seasonal changes or, for example, Indonesia has been hit with a 32% tariff and just the threat of tariffs in Colombia caused prices to go up. And nobody on the seller’s end is eating that—and Indonesia is going to be a real issue for us, because coffee from there is in a lot of our popular blends.”
The Brinegars’ solution to those very scary and rapidly changing issues? The customer pays that additional 5%, and the business absorbs the rest. Even so, with regular drip coffee running between $2.25 and $3.05 a cup, Ohori’s is still more affordable than other local shops, all while employing more than 30 workers across its two locations and enjoying a rabid fanbase who all love the coffee just a little bit less than I, personally, do. How does a small local coffee business manage that for so long?
“I think we are valuable in this time and place in society, a place where you come in and are talking with a human; and we’re slow to take on new things,” Brinegar continues. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with fads, fads are fun, but Ohori’s is more…what’s the word I want? Steadfast.”
For example, the Brinegars started offering cold brews well after its initial burst in popularity some years ago (it’s delicious, btw), and you won’t find that flash-in-the-pan nitro stuff there, either. The company now also owns its flagship building on St. Francis, with an assist from local housing and property nonprofit Homewise. That alone is a huge relief for the Brinegars, according to Tai, but money has still never been the first item on her list.
“There’s value to a small business that holds a place in a community,” she says. “But it’s still hard, and I know I could bring in more money working for a large corporation or whatever—but I love talking to people and I love being that place for people. In the future? I don’t know. Maybe our kids will take it over. Or maybe we might have to look at the number of coffees we sell, the types we sell. We think almost daily about setting up a roaster in an old barn and just doing mail order. But I’m not a person who does a lot of projections. We adjust well. So if the kids don’t want it, we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”
