Museum of Design Atlanta
Business X Design: Aaron Fender of Portrait Coffee
Business X Design is MODA's event series that explores how design fuels innovation, solves complex challenges, and shapes the world we live in. We invite boundary-pushing creatives to share the bold ideas and design thinking behind their work.
Aaron Fender co-founded Portrait Coffee after a trip to Rwanda changed how he saw the coffee industry. At 22, he watched local washing stations control the economies around them, extracting value from the places that grew the coffee. Eventually he posed a question that now informs everything he does: what would a coffee company look like if it gave back to a neighborhood instead of passing through it?
The answer is Portrait, a roastery and shop in southwest Atlanta, housed in a building once owned by Laura Watkins, the city's first Black female real estate broker. Aaron's wife's family has lived in the neighborhood for generations.
Nearly six years and one pandemic pivot later, Portrait has become a gathering place first and a coffee shop second, the kind of space people build a life around rather than pass through for a morning cup.
In this edition of Business x Design, Aaron will be in conversation with Gene Kansas about the decisions—geographic, architectural, and economic—behind building a company that treats its supply chain and its neighborhood as design problems worth solving.
What to Expect
Arrive early to see MODA’s latest exhibition
Program begins promptly at 6:15 PM
How a trip to Rwanda's coffee washing stations changed Aaron's understanding of supply chains as systems of power
Why Portrait's location in southwest Atlanta, in a building tied to the city's first Black female broker, was a deliberate design choice
How the pandemic and the racial justice movement of 2020 reshaped Portrait's growth
What it means to build a coffee shop as a space for community life, not just a transaction
About Aaron Fender
Aaron Fender is Co-Founder and CEO of Portrait Coffee, a roastery and coffee shop in southwest Atlanta. Before founding Portrait, he worked as a barista and general manager through college, then spent time at Industrious before returning to coffee with a sharper sense of purpose. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and their two young children.
About the Interviewer
Gene Kansas is the founder of Gene Kansas Real Estate, which focuses on history, culture, and positive impact. Susan Sanders is MODA's Director of Development and Exhibition Designer. She believes that design changes everything.
Registration: $15 | $11.25 for MODA members
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Accessibility: Designers with different styles of learning or special needs are welcome in MODA public programs. We will be able to most effectively help everyone learn and enjoy this experience if we know about those needs in advance of the program. Please email miranda@museumofdesign.org with questions or information.
Questions About This Event: Felicia E. Gail, MODA Public Programming & Membership Manager at felicia@museumofdesign.org
Cancellation Policy: MODA reserves the right to cancel a program if the minimum enrollment requirements are not met, but don't worry: should MODA have to cancel, we will gladly issue a full refund to all registrants. If you need to cancel your plans for any reason, we kindly request that you notify us at least 7 days prior to the event start. By doing so, we can process a refund for the ticket cost (minus a small $10 processing fee per class). Unfortunately, we cannot provide refunds for cancellations made less than 7 days before an event.
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