WAYNE RICHMON: co-founder, coffee curator AND PART-TIME EXTROVERT
Before opening Roast Rider, Wayne spent six years exploring wine and specialty coffee on the Oregon coast, and in Boston, New York and California. In 2012, he felt it was time to break out of his role counseling entrepreneurs on their finances, and got down to writing a business plan of his own.
Roast Rider is what happens when a successful CFO suffers an acute bout of reinvention psychosis.
When he opened RR in 2013, during Specialty Coffee’s Third Wave, Wayne had every intention of being the hand-drip guy. But after two days at the Specialty Coffee Association of America event, guided by Equator Coffees CEO Helen Russell, he was converted to ‘Trifecta Dude.’ He liked that the Trifecta outperformed a French press in its ability to offer a full expression of exceptional beans.
Wayne is always on the lookout for the next best thing with the knowledge that an exceptional shot of espresso is the sum of its parts.
AN EVERGREEN “WHY”
Approaching 2025, Lisa and Wayne still see themselves as curators, not specialty coffee engineers. They don’t roast beans or run a full kitchen. They leave that up to award-winning B-corp roasters and purpose-driven chefs who always knew that social responsibility and transparency are foundational to good business.
At Roast, riding the Third, Fourth, and soon the Fifth wave is all about sharing coffee tips and exciting discoveries while valuing what customers have learned on their coffee journeys far and away.
As customer experience overachievers, Wayne and Lisa respect their role feeding and fueling weary parents, remote workers, scared patients, brazen entrepreneurs, lost loves, and anyone in transition.
LISA RICHMON: co-founder, curator & CHIEF CHARISMA OFFICER
Averages zero cups of coffee a year, but has an eye for baristas. She can spot who has it, who wants it, and who is gonna bring it. And she treats them like family. (The kind you like.)
Lisa is a professional journalist who married business and storytelling before it was mainstream.
Wayne is still getting used to the spice Lisa adds to the shop’s social media marketing. (Secretly, though, he’s obsessed.)
She also works with their outstanding local partners to ensure that everything Roast serves you is organic, from-scratch and powered by the fewest and purest ingredients.
MOST IMPULSIVE THING LISA EVER DID?
Moved from Boca Raton, Florida to Virginia Beach to live with a young CPA she met on a blind phone date. He didn’t offer to pay for her ticket, but did pay her back ‘with interest’ when she agreed to move into his Virginia Beach townhouse a month later. (Lisa’s father was a CPA so she knew what she was getting into.)
WORTH IT. CHECK OUT THE MULTI-FACETED EVIDENCE.
Local Love: before Roast was conceived, Lisa applied her dual perspective as a New York native and Virginia Beach resident to the publication of 36 Hours: Virginia Beach in The New York Times travel section.