Pour a cup of First Light Roasters’ Kenya AA through a Chemex on a slow morning and the coffee introduces itself before you taste it. First comes jasmine, clean and almost floral. Then a body of milk chocolate, smooth and rounded. The finish is honeydew melon, juicy and bright, the kind of sweetness that makes you put down your phone and pay attention. Until recently, a cup like this was something Metro Detroit had to order from Brooklyn or drive to Chicago to find. Now it is roasted on Industrial Road in Livonia.
First Light Roasters is the work of a husband and wife, Sam Noor and Amal Almaflahi, and the story begins generations before the business did. Sam grew up with the memory of his grandmother roasting green coffee in a Somali courtyard, beans carried down from the Cal Madow mountains. Amal’s family comes from Yemen, where the world first brewed coffee centuries ago. When the two married, those two ancient coffee cultures met in a single cup, and a roastery was born of their shared love for it.
Today First Light is Michigan’s largest Black-owned coffee roastery, with the capacity to roast 1,500 pounds a day, yet scale was never the point. Quality was. The company is SCA-certified and sources its green coffee directly through licensed partners at origin, including Coffee Board of Kenya licensed importer Kifahari Coffee. Every batch is roasted small, to order, and shipped within forty-eight hours, so what arrives at your door tastes exactly as the roaster intended. As Sam puts it, “Clarity is not a metaphor for us. It is a technical goal: a clean cup where every flavor resolves into the next.”
The Kenya AA is the flagship, but it is the doorway to something larger. Under its premium label, Detroit Halite, named for the vast salt deposits mined beneath the city for over a century, First Light showcases Africa’s most coveted coffees. The Kenya AA comes from the prized SL28 variety grown on the high slopes of Kirinyaga. Alongside it sit a Rwanda Gitwe from a sought-after Bourbon lot and an Ethiopia Grade 1, each a benchmark of its origin. For everyday tables, cafes, and grocers across Metro Detroit, the First Light Roasters label offers expertly crafted, approachable blends. One roastery, two ways to drink exceptionally well.
For Sam and Amal, the mission is bigger than any single bag. They describe it simply: to bring the peace of Africa’s coffee tradition to the Midwest. In a region that knows good food and drink, they want Detroiters to discover that some of the finest coffees in the world can be roasted by their neighbors, with reverence for every origin.
The story is still being written. First Light celebrates the grand opening of its Livonia cafe on August 22, 2026, where guests can taste these coffees the way they are meant to be experienced. Until then, the easiest way to begin is the way Sam’s grandmother would have understood: brew a cup, slow down, and pay attention.
Discover First Light Roasters and the Detroit Halite collection at firstlightroasters.com, with free shipping on orders over $40, and follow along on Instagram and Facebook at @firstlightroasters.
Roasted for clarity. Crafted at first light.
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