Our Founder

One varietal.
One standard.

Petal & Stone is a Geisha-only specialty coffee company based in Carmel, Indiana — founded by Thomas Main to bring the rarest expression of the varietal to people who care about what’s in their cup.

Thomas Main — Founder

Thomas Main grew up around coffee in a different way than most. A backyard roaster in his early twenties, he spent a decade buying, brewing, and cupping specialty coffees from every region he could get his hands on — not as a roaster first, but as a student of the cup.

What he kept coming back to was Geisha. Not because it was fashionable or expensive, but because it was the only varietal where the cup character changed so dramatically with altitude, processing, and harvest that it kept teaching him something. He founded Petal & Stone in Carmel, Indiana, with a single constraint: source only Geisha, only from farms he could verify, and only lots that cleared a cupping standard high enough to honor what the varietal can do.

“Geisha taught me that one varietal, taken seriously, is a whole world — not a category on a menu.”

Today, Petal & Stone’s roster is the result of that constraint: five producers, four countries, every lot cupping 90 or higher, every bag roasted and shipped within 48 hours of an order being placed.

Thomas Main — Carmel, Indiana
Our Philosophy
01
Geisha, nothing else
We source only the Geisha varietal — by design. Not Geisha-plus-everything-else. Every farm relationship, every cupping standard, and every harvest decision is built around what makes this one varietal distinct.
02
90+ cupping scores
Only lots that clear the 90-point threshold on the SCA scale make our collection. Scoring below that doesn’t mean the coffee isn’t good — it means it doesn’t express Geisha’s full potential, and we’d rather pass than dilute the shelf.
03
Single-farm traceability
Every bag is traceable to a specific farm. We verify varietal identity — not everything labelled Geisha is Geisha — and producers are paid based on cupping score, not volume, so quality alignment runs from farm to cup.
Our Standards

What we won’t compromise

Two of the standards that define what carries the Petal & Stone name — the cupping threshold at the cup, and the roast-and-ship window between your order and your door.

90+ cupping score, every lot
Every lot we carry must score 90 or above on the SCA 100-point scale. That threshold isn’t a marketing line — it’s the line below which Geisha’s signature aromatics (jasmine, bergamot, peach, tropical fruit) start to fade. Lots scoring 87–89 are good specialty coffee, just not what we built this collection to carry.
Roasted & shipped within 48 hours
Geisha’s aromatic compounds are its most perishable feature. We roast only after your order is placed — no inventory, no warehouse aging — and ship the same week, Monday through Thursday. From roast to your door is rarely more than a handful of days.
Roasted to Order

From the roaster to
your door in 48 hours

Every order placed by Thursday is roasted that week and shipped within 48 hours. We don’t warehouse and we don’t substitute — what you ordered is what gets bagged, weighed, and shipped, rest.

The peak flavor window for Geisha is 7 to 21 days post-roast. Anything older than that and you’re drinking a memory of the bean, not the bean. Roast-to-order is the only format that keeps the cup honest.

Monday through Thursday shipping only — Friday and weekend orders go out the following week so no bag sits in a depot over the weekend.

Browse Current Lots →
Four Origins

The producers
behind Petal & Stone

Panama, Ethiopia, Colombia, and Costa Rica — the four countries our collection is built around. Each contributes a different expression of the Geisha varietal: terroir, altitude, and processing method all shape what ends up in your cup. Click through to read the full provenance on the Origins page.

Panama
Hacienda La Esmeralda
See the farms →
Ethiopia
Gesha Village Estate
See the farms →
Colombia
Finca Cerro Azul
See the farms →
Costa Rica
Finca Las Nubes
See the farms →