High Point Roasters, Inc.

Dan calls himself the coffee man. About fifty flavors and origins sit on the shelf at any given time at High Point Roasters, a retail-and-roastery setup on MS-15 in New Albany that supplies most of the coffee shops in northeast Mississippi. You walk in to the smell of roasting and can watch beans get bagged on the spot. There are no prepared drinks. This is a bean store, and Dan is the bean guy.

The three-dollar sample bags are the smartest move on the menu. Each one is roughly twelve cups, which is enough to figure out whether you like a roast before you commit to a full bag. Try a few. The organic Chiapas Turquesa, a Mexican bean, gets singled out by customers, and the Bremen coffee is another one people come back for. The shelf rotates depending on what Dan has been roasting that week. Sam comes up in stories too. He went out of his way to fill an order on a snow day, which is the kind of detail that tells you how this place runs.

There is no cafe seating to speak of. This is a place to walk in, smell the roaster, ask Dan what's good this week, fill a few sample bags, and walk out with beans for the next month. Home brewers and home roasters who like to experiment will find more on the shelf here than at most cafes in a major metro. The wholesale supply to northeast Mississippi cafes is the second business layer underneath the retail door.

Who it suits: home brewers and roasters who want fresh whole beans across a wide range of origins, and Mississippi locals who want to back the operation supplying their neighborhood cafes. Not the right call if you came for an espresso to drink on the spot. Bring a cooler, an open mind, and grab the sample bags.