Arcade Coffee Roasters Celebrates 13 Years as Riverside's Specialty Coffee Benchmark

The local roaster has built a reputation for obsessive quality control and community-focused sourcing.

Apr. 18, 2026 at 6:15pm

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A brightly colored, high-contrast silkscreen print of a single, iconic coffee cup object repeated in a tight grid pattern, utilizing flat, vibrant, and unnatural neon color palettes overlapping with heavy black photographic outlines to turn the everyday coffee cup into modern pop art.Arcade Coffee Roasters' obsession with quality and community has made it a must-visit destination for coffee lovers across Riverside and the Inland Empire.Riverside Today

Arcade Coffee Roasters, a specialty coffee roaster with three locations in Riverside, California, has spent the last 13 years establishing itself as the benchmark for quality coffee in the region. Co-founders Stevie Hasemeyer and Shane Levario have built a business focused on meticulous sourcing, roasting, and training to ensure every cup meets their high standards.

Why it matters

In a city once lacking in specialty coffee options, Arcade has helped drive the growth of a vibrant local coffee culture in Riverside. The roaster's commitment to quality and community has made it a destination for coffee lovers across the Inland Empire.

The details

Arcade roasts all of its coffee on Mondays and Tuesdays, ensuring everything on the shelves by Wednesday was roasted the day before. This attention to freshness is just one part of the roaster's obsessive quality control process, which includes weekly cuppings where the team evaluates each coffee blind to make adjustments. Lead roaster Shane Levario is a certified Q grader, the international standard for objectively scoring coffee, and uses his highly trained palate to source exceptional single-origin beans from long-term importer relationships.

  • Arcade Coffee Roasters was founded in the early 2010s.
  • The roaster has operated three locations in Riverside for the past 13 years.

The players

Stevie Hasemeyer

Co-founder of Arcade Coffee Roasters.

Shane Levario

Co-founder and lead roaster at Arcade Coffee Roasters, a certified Q grader.

Westin Mills

Head roaster at Arcade Coffee Roasters.

Gabe Beltran

Lead roaster at Arcade Coffee Roasters.

Valeria Salgado

Dedicated training coordinator at Arcade Coffee Roasters.

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What they’re saying

“You are the last line of defense to make sure this coffee is good. This coffee started at a farm in Colombia. That guy worked hard to make sure the soil was good, that there was enough water. Then it got processed, dried, shipped here. There's so much work that went into getting it to that point — don't mess it up.”

— Stevie Hasemeyer, Co-founder

“I found this really awesome coffee shop, and we went up on the Tibetan Plateau and the owner was teaching someone how to roast coffee. We were eating fresh coffee beans out of the roaster. That's where the whole vision for Arcade came from — he'd get there crazy early in the morning to roast coffee, and the shop would just fill with the smell of it.”

— Stevie Hasemeyer, Co-founder

“I remember driving all the way out to LA all the time just to get coffee. It got me excited to go find other places like that.”

— Shane Levario, Co-founder

“Technical knowledge is a little bit easier to learn than the palate. Understanding what a coffee tastes like and then knowing what to do about it — that's the hard part.”

— Shane Levario, Co-founder and Lead Roaster

“We've always wanted to help be the start of good food and good things happening out here. And it's happening.”

— Stevie Hasemeyer, Co-founder

What’s next

Arcade Coffee Roasters is actively pursuing a direct-trade relationship with a coffee farmer in Indonesia, working to have samples scored and, if quality holds, to build a year-over-year buying relationship.

The takeaway

Arcade Coffee Roasters has spent 13 years establishing itself as the benchmark for specialty coffee in Riverside, California, through its obsessive focus on quality, community-driven sourcing, and comprehensive training program. The roaster's commitment to excellence at every step, from farm to cup, has helped drive the growth of a vibrant local coffee culture in a city that once lacked specialty options.