Deborah “Deb” Di Bernardo, the beloved founder of Spokane, Washington-based roasting company Roast House, died this week at the age of 70 after a third time facing cancer.

Di Bernardo is remembered as a fun-loving yet deeply passionate advocate for positive social and environmental change. She was also known as an enthusiastic user of the F-word, an endearing trait that inspired Roast House’s F-Bomb cold brew brand.

“She was a magical unicorn of a human and there’s a giant gap in the universe without her presence — that’s for sure,” Aaron Jordan, Roast House co-owner and a longtime colleague of Di Bernardo’s,.

Di Bernardo made Aaron and Allison Jordan managing partners of Roast House in 2020 following a previous cancer diagnosis. In 2023, while also experiencing cancer, Di Bernardo sold her other coffee business, the First Avenue Coffee shop, according to a Spokesman-Review report.

“Deb — founder, force of nature, boss lady, and guiding light — left this planet on December 15th, leaving us poor bastards to carry on without her,” the Jordans wrote on Instagram yesterday. “She made an immense impact on this world that will resonate through time and space forever — especially in the lives she touched through this beautiful space at Roast House.”

Di Bernardo and her husband, Jim Haynes, founded Roast House in Spokane in 2010, focusing on high-quality and organic-certified coffees. The company has kept sustainability at its core since its inception.

Once, when painting the walls of the roastery and tasting room on Cleveland Ave. in Spokane, Di Bernardo wrote, “I might not change the world… But I can try.” “Deb was relentlessly dedicated to sustainable foods, organic coffee, supporting conservation, and caring for everyone in her life with incomprehensible generosity,” the Jordans wrote. “She passed surrounded by loved ones — including her dog, Lucy, of course. Deb and Jim have entrusted Roast House to us (Allison and Aaron Jordan) after we’ve worked by their side over the last 12 years. We are deeply honored to preserve and continue her legacy. While we might not change the world either, we sure are going to try with the same vigor that she did!”