Drop 48 Night Shift Friday 7 a.m. 300 bags In the shop and online No reruns

Roasted loud in Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh

Sleep is for people who don’t drink Riot.

Small-batch coffee from a roastery in an old machine shop. Every other Friday, one new coffee drops — in the shop at 7 a.m. and online at 7:01 — and when it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

See Drop 48 Find the shop
The Drop 48 bag: a plain matte black coffee bag with a Riot · Drop 48 sticker, standing on hot pink

Drop 48 · This Friday

Night Shift

Guji, Ethiopia · natural process · light-medium roast

Blueberry. Dark chocolate. Black tea.

  • 300 bags
  • 12 oz whole bean
  • $22

Friday, 7 a.m. in the shop · 7:01 a.m. online

If Drop 47 is any guide, it sells out before lunch: that one went in 41 minutes.

Get the drop text
A line of people in coats and beanies waiting along the brick front before the roll-up door opens, a few holding travel mugs, their breath showing in the cold
Drop 47, 6:40 a.m.

How a drop works

  1. We find one coffee worth shouting about.
  2. We roast 300 bags of it, once.
  3. It drops Friday at 7. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Fresh-roasted beans pouring from the roaster’s door into the round cooling tray, its arm sweeping through them as steam rises
Drop 48, cooling on Wednesday

No reruns.

Every drop is roasted once and sold out. The last five, and the one that started it.

Hands folding the top of a plain black coffee bag on a steel table, a row of filled bags beside it and the roaster behind
Bag 1 of 300

The shop

The roastery is the café. Order at the bar, watch the roaster run, take a bag home.

Inside the shop: a barista behind a long steel bar lined with cups, two customers leaning on it, and the black drum roaster beyond, under bare pendant lamps and brick walls
Order here. Watch it roast.
The shop at night: the roll-up door half raised and lit from inside, a customer ducking under it past the roaster and stacked sacks of green coffee
4417 Foundry Alley, after close

4417 Foundry Alley, Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, PA 15201

  • Mon–Fri 6:30 a.m.–4 p.m.
  • Sat–Sun 8 a.m.–4 p.m.
  • Drop Fridays: the drop hits the shelf at 7 a.m.

(412) 555-0148

On the bar

  • Espresso$3.50
  • Drip$3
  • The current drop as a pour-over$6
FOUNDRY ALLEY RIOT

Community

  • Thursday cuppings

    Taste Friday’s drop the night before. Thursdays at 7 p.m., 20 seats, free, first come.

  • Friday openings

    A local DJ plays from 7 a.m. until the drop sells out. Bring your own mug for a dollar off.

  • The drop text

    4,200 people get one text the night before each drop. No ads, nothing else.

A Thursday cupping: a woman bends low to smell a white bowl at a long steel counter lined with bowls, other tasters with spoons around her and the roaster behind
Thursday, 7 p.m. Slurp loud.
A hand setting the needle on a record at the end of the steel bar, two espresso cups beside the turntable and the roaster across the room
Friday, 7:01 a.m.

About

Olivia Herrera in a black apron with her sleeves rolled, one hand on the roaster, looking straight at the camera

Riot started in 2024 in a shut-down machine shop on Foundry Alley, with a 15-kilo roaster, a borrowed espresso machine and one rule: roast it loud, sell it out, never repeat it. Forty-seven drops later, the rule hasn’t changed.

Olivia Herrera, head roaster. Fifteen years on other people’s roasters before this one. She picks every drop and roasts every bag.

“If I’d sell it twice, it’s not a drop.”

— Olivia Herrera, head roaster