Ready Set Coffee Roasters

The roasting room is right next door. Ready Set in Cleveland's Gordon Square runs three rooms of varied seating, with owner Molly's house roast going into every cup and the side room emitting a noticeable smell when the roaster is working. The music swings from indie rock to lo-fi instrumental. Cleveland Bagel Company supplies the bagels, which is the right local partnership to have on the food side. Ready Set also supplies beans to other carts wholesale, so Molly's roast is in cups across the city.

Oat milk is the default with no upcharge, which is a stated policy rather than an accommodation tacked on at the bar. The three-room layout gives the place real flexibility, with varied seating shapes and heights letting different visit types coexist without crowding each other. The warm, hip Gordon Square room feel and the modern clean lines together make it a comfortable place to spend three hours.

The strawberry latte is one of the signatures and the order to start with on a first visit. The iced milk and cookies latte is the dessert-adjacent move that customers repeat. The honey vanilla latte covers the more classical sweet lane. The banana bread latte is the seasonal-feeling repeat order, and a Cleveland Bagel with cream cheese covers most of the lane on the food side. The espresso runs darker than typical, with smoke and chocolate notes, and that can read bitter to some palates, which is worth flagging directly for anyone who orders straight shots.

Good WiFi and ample tables make this a working remote-worker shop, with some regulars driving in from Akron specifically to use the room for the day. Vegan and dairy-free customers are well covered by the oat-default policy. Dogs are welcome. Street parking is mostly the only option, and weekends get loud when the room fills. The roasting room next door is the technical center of the operation, and the bagel partnership is the food backbone.