Aroma Coffee Co. is turning five years old, and its owners want to celebrate the community that helped them get here.

Aroma marks its anniversary with a block party each year, but this one will be the biggest yet, said co-owner Emily Ridout. Festivities will include live music, a wine and beer garden, a toy-making workshop, giveaways and a street market with artisan and food vendors.

The event is from 3-7 p.m. Sept. 13. It will also include a free tasting of Aroma’s new private label coffee blends and a large giveaway to commemorate the additions.

Aroma will additionally use the block party to formally launch its private event service. Though the shop has always been available for private events, Ridout said they are trying to grow that side of the business.

Aroma opened Sept. 11, 2020, in Fall City’s historic Prescott-Harshman House. Its owners — Kelsey Wilson, Sara Cox and Ridout — worked toward that day for 13 years, experiencing an array of setbacks on top of a pandemic postponement.

Five years later, the coffee shop is a community staple. It has a strong list of regulars and averaged 500 customers on Saturdays this summer, Ridout said.

But this level of success wasn’t in the team’s wildest dreams.

“We were fine with [something small], if we can keep three or five people employed and support our little town with some yummy coffee in a cool community place, then great,” Ridout said, noting the “absolute contrast of what we imagined to what we are today.”

Ridout said Aroma got to where it is today thanks to its customers, who have not only noticed the shop’s mission, but adopted it themselves. She bragged about their regulars, like the ones who sit on the porch and greet other customers each morning, or the man who got his food handling license “just in case he’s ever needed.”

“I would want people to hear us say how deeply grateful we are,” she said.

Regardless of where the next five years take the Aroma team, Ridout says they will stay true to the mission that brought them here in the first place.

“All along the way, we’ve really focused on just building a really heart-centric, mission-centric team,” she said. “Through a lot of changes and having to kind of pivot a ton, we are just so committed to our mission of cultivating fullness of life.”

New coffee beans on the scene

Aroma serves coffee roasted by Camber Coffee in Bellingham and has long had a proprietary blend, Prescott, named after the historic house it resides in.

Recently, Aroma partnered with Camber to formulate three new private label blends. The first is called The Landing, which was Fall City’s previous moniker, as it was the last good place to “land” on the Snoqualmie River.

The next blend is called The Switchboard and is Aroma’s decaf blend. In 1912, the Prescott house got the town’s first switchboard for its woman-owned phone company. The story is extra special to the Aroma team, Ridout said, since they are a woman-owned business.

“Decaf is just a really, really commonly compromised coffee,” she said. “And our decaf is so exceptional. So we really wanted to put a special story on it because it’s a special coffee.”

The final blend is called Pete’s Treefort Club and was chosen by Pete Nelson, the Treehouse Master and owner of Nelson Treehouse. The blend and its packaging honor the treefort Nelson opened in Aroma’s garden last year.

“I would say that this is probably one of our richest, most grounding coffees that we’ve ever had at Aroma,” Ridout said. “It just blends so beautifully to the honor of the treefort. I think people are just gonna absolutely love this coffee.”

The block party will include a “massive giveaway” in partnership with Treehouse Point and Camber Coffee, Ridout said. The winner will get a six-month subscription of the Pete’s Treefort Club blend, an overnight stay at Treehouse Point and a private reservation in the treefort with coffee and pastries.

Instructions for entering the giveaway can be found in an Aug. 29 post on Aroma’s Instagram page.