Where to Find Great Coffee in Manitou Springs & Colorado Springs, CO

Red Dog sits on the main tourist drag in Manitou Springs, which means that on a July weekend the line moves steadily and the baked goods on the counter are gone by noon. The shop has the relaxed, colorful energy of a place that has been here a while and does not need to prove anything. Art on the walls, breakfast burritos that people drive in for, Josh and John's ice cream when the afternoon gets warm. The coffee is sourced from Colorado Coffee Merchants — they are buying from a Colorado roaster, not roasting themselves — and the resulting cup is honest and consistent. If you are hiking the Incline in the morning and need something to eat at six a.m., this is your place. The door is open early.

The Loft has a no-WiFi policy, which in 2024 is a position statement. Owners Katie and Justin bought the shop in fall 2020 and have leaned into the idea that a coffee shop should be a place where you talk to the person next to you. The seasonal drink menu runs to things like Hazelnut Rose Matcha and Sparkling Watermelon Lemonade — not the coffee-purist's approach, but the tourists on Canon Ave are not coffee purists. Bagels are baked in-house. The 4.7-star Google rating across 228 reviews is not an accident. Bean sourcing is not publicly identified, which means there is an open door for a conversation. [UNVERIFIED: current coffee supplier]

Persephone Grae's occupies the health-conscious end of the Manitou Springs coffee spectrum — smoothies, juice cocktails, and espresso drinks made with fresh local ingredients, a menu that reflects the town's long-running interest in mineral water and wellness. Family-owned. Listed in the official Manitou Springs Visitor Guide. Coffee sourcing is unknown; the shop serves espresso but has not publicly identified its roaster. Worth a visit if you are looking for something other than a straight black coffee after a morning hike. [UNVERIFIED: coffee supplier]

Billy and Brandi Chism started Rocky Mountain Beignets as a food truck in 2019 and eventually landed on the main Manitou strip. The concept is New Orleans beignets in a Colorado mountain town, which works better than it sounds — the combination of powdered sugar and high-altitude thin air is its own phenomenon. They pair their beignets with café au lait, and the listing mentions locally roasted coffee beans, though the specific roaster is not identified. Tourist volume on the main strip is real, and the café au lait format is a meaningful coffee program by any measure. [UNVERIFIED: specific coffee roaster supplier]

Frankly Coffee is 270 square feet. A yellow La Marzocco espresso machine takes up a meaningful fraction of the floor plan. The rest is counter, stools, and the whimsical llama decor that owner Brandon Noffsinger apparently finds non-negotiable. The shop is on the Old Colorado City strip — W. Colorado Ave — which is the pedestrian district that connects Colorado Springs to Manitou Springs and draws visitors going back and forth between the two. The coffee is third-wave serious: multi-roaster, currently sourcing from Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters (Lakewood/Denver) and Roseline (Oregon). Brandon has said explicitly that he would rather buy from great roasters than try to roast consistently well himself. The Buzzing Bee cold brew — cold brew, lemon, local honey — is worth ordering. [NOTE: Sweet Bloom is the current incumbent; the 2021 sourcing details should be confirmed before outreach]

Jives is an Old Colorado City institution: live music, open mic nights, the strawberry chai that locals order without looking at the menu. It has a stage and a neighborhood-living-room energy that is genuinely hard to manufacture. The coffee is roasted on-site — all beans are hand-selected and roasted fresh daily, in-house — so Jives is in the self-roaster column. Worth visiting for the atmosphere and the music calendar. Not a wholesale prospect.

People who know about Kairos Coffee House describe it as a true hidden gem — which is partly because it is not on the main Colorado Springs coffee circuit and partly because you have to want to find it. Quiet workspace, art-deco lounge, a refillable mug program that suggests a certain seriousness about the customer relationship. The shop operates under the YWAM umbrella and has a mission-driven orientation that is not performative. Currently sources locally-roasted beans from Colorado Springs roasters rather than self-roasting — though a separate 'Kairos Coffee Roasters' Square storefront has been spotted online, and it is worth verifying whether they have recently pivoted before outreach. [UNVERIFIED: confirm roasting status before contact]

Loyal Coffee is what Colorado Springs coffee people are proudest of. Barista-owned, launched by people who came up through Wild Goose Meeting House, roasting at 'The Clubhouse' inside the Ivywild School building on S. Nevada Ave. The espresso is some of the best you will find in Colorado — not a soft claim, and not a wrong one. Multiple locations now. The roast and wholesale program are their own operation, which means Loyal is not a wholesale prospect — but it is worth knowing what the benchmark looks like in this market.

Veteran-owned and family-operated, Building Three has been roasting on N. Cascade Ave since winning Best Roaster in Colorado Springs in 2017. Their 'seed to cup' framing is not marketing copy — they take sourcing seriously and make the roaster visible to customers inside the shop. In-house roasting, open Tuesday through Saturday, breakfast and pastries. Another self-roaster in a self-roaster-dense city.

Switchback roasts in-house on a Probat 12kg roaster — visible to customers, which is the point. They have a second location in the Hillside neighborhood and an active wholesale program that already supplies coffee shops, law firms, and other businesses around the city, with expansion underway. Worth knowing as a competitor in the Colorado Springs wholesale market.

Kate founded Carnelian in 2017 in Old Colorado City with a Bellwether Coffee roaster — a refrigerator-sized electric roaster that does not require ventilation upgrades, which is a clever solution for a small retail space. She roasts six pounds at a time and has built a wholesale customer list that reaches beyond Colorado Springs. The honey lavender latte and the handmade pottery mugs are the things people photograph. The in-house bakery produces everything from scratch. Another self-roaster, another skip for wholesale purposes — but worth eating a pastry here.

Sacred Ground is out on Cheyenne Blvd, near the mouth of North Cheyenne Canyon — the kind of location that means your customer has just finished hiking or is about to. Family-owned since 2013, patio looking out at Cheyenne Mountain, cocktails and full food menu alongside the coffee. The shop uses organic beans from local roasters and does not self-roast. The trail-adjacent location and outdoor patio are the draws; the coffee program is a vehicle, not the point. That is exactly the kind of account where sourcing decisions are about story and relationship rather than coffee-world prestige.

The Cliff House opened as a stagecoach stop in 1873 and has been operating ever since, which is a long time to be in the hospitality business at the foot of a major mountain. Today it is a 54-room boutique luxury hotel with a formal dining room (Red Mountain Bar & Grill), veranda dining, and a wine program staffed by a Master Sommelier. Breakfast is served daily to hotel guests and walk-in restaurant customers. No coffee brand or roaster is publicly identified anywhere in their materials — which is a genuine opening, because an operation this size and this premium needs a coffee program that matches the room rates. The F&B director is the contact. [UNVERIFIED: current coffee supplier — direct call recommended before outreach]

The Mining Exchange is a former stock exchange building in downtown Colorado Springs, now a boutique hotel under Practice Hospitality management. The coffee shop inside — BLK MGK — runs 6am to 3pm, serves a full breakfast menu, and has a slightly witchy herbal tincture add-on program (bitters, colloidal silver, B12, collagen). The beans come from Hold Fast Coffee Co., a Colorado Springs roaster. The pairing makes sense: hotel in the Springs, local roaster in the Springs. Hold Fast is the incumbent here, and it will be an uphill conversation. Worth knowing about as a market intelligence data point.

The Broadmoor is a five-star resort with 784 rooms, multiple dining venues, and the Pikes Peak Cog Railway (which it has owned since 2018). The Summit House café at 14,115 feet is technically part of the Broadmoor coffee program, which is a remarkable sentence. Current coffee sourcing is Lavazza specialty roast at Café Julie's and Nespresso machines in-room. Both are national or international brands locked into corporate contracts. The scale is real — an account this size would be meaningful — but the procurement pathway is not a cold-call situation. Flag for warm-intro approach only.

Blue Skies Inn has been operating for over 28 years and has delivered, by their own count, more than 500,000 house-baked muffins to guests in picnic baskets delivered directly to each suite every morning. The coffee is part of every morning basket. They are a small operation — low room count, limited volume — but the format means a reliable daily pull and an owner-operated relationship that is a straightforward conversation. The Contour story (Colorado roaster, Lakewood, specialty) is a natural fit for a B&B that has been making handmade muffins for three decades. [UNVERIFIED: current coffee supplier]

Red Crags is a 7,000-square-foot historic manor on a two-acre estate in Manitou Springs, with panoramic views of Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, and Garden of the Gods from the rooms. Full breakfast service in an upscale setting, multiple guest rooms. Coffee sourcing is not publicly disclosed. The premium positioning and the morning-breakfast format make this a natural fit for a specialty roaster conversation — a Colorado roaster, Lakewood-based, with a story that lands well in a room with a view of the Front Range. [UNVERIFIED: address and current coffee supplier — address not confirmed from public sources]