Most espresso companies in Kootenai County didn't last. Here's what the state's records show

Of 42 businesses with "espresso" in their company name, the state has dissolved 31. Half of those were gone within about two years.

How many of Kootenai County's espresso businesses have closed? We couldn't find anyone who keeps that count, so we built one from the Idaho Secretary of State's business records.

What we counted

We pulled every company registered in Idaho with the word "espresso" in its name, then kept the ones with a Kootenai County address. That left 42 businesses. We counted Golden Glo's five companies, one per stand, as one business, and did the same for three other owners who filed twice.

31 of the 42 are gone. The state has dissolved them. Half of those were dissolved within about 2.3 years of forming, 11 within two years and 26 within five.

The 2006 rush, and the crash after it

The chart shows a burst. From 2005 through 2009, 14 espresso companies formed here, most of them in 2006 and 2007. By 2011, 13 of the 14 were gone. That wave of closures lined up with the Great Recession, which ran from late 2007 to mid-2009. The one company from that group still on the state's books is Best Buzz Espresso, formed in 2006.

Who's still standing

The 11 still listed as active include some of the busiest names on our coffee stand map: Jitterz Espresso, Golden Glo Espresso and Buck Wild Espresso. The rest are Bean Buzz Espresso and Fire Up Espresso and Eats in Spirit Lake, Idahome Espresso in Coeur d'Alene, Timber Ridge Espresso in Worley, Down Range Espresso and Udders Espresso in Rathdrum, and Gourmet Bean Espresso and Deli in Hayden.

Two newer ones to watch: the state dissolved Taproot Espresso & Juice Bar's company in March 2026 and Boost Espresso's company in May 2026. Boost's stand on Sherman Avenue still shows up in business listings, and we're checking whether it's open.

What a "dissolved" company does and doesn't mean

A dissolved company doesn't always mean a closed stand. The state dissolves companies that stop filing their yearly report, and some owners keep running under their own name or a new company. Some stands never form a company at all and run under a registered business name instead, like Great Escapes Espresso and Lakeland Perk. Stands without "espresso" in their company name, like Milk & Honey or Kokopelli, aren't in this count. So treat these numbers as a floor for how many came and went, not an exact tally of closed windows.

For comparison, across all kinds of businesses, Idaho had the third-highest one-year failure rate of any state in a LendingTree analysis of federal labor data, at 30.7%.

Why some last

The records can't say why a business closed. What they do show is that the survivors include the operators who grew past one stand, like Jitterz and Golden Glo. Next, we're asking stand owners directly what it takes to stay open: how many cars a day they need, what a latte costs them to make, and what changed when coffee prices jumped.

If you ran one of these stands, we'd like to hear your story.