Revelator Coffee Company was born in New Orleans and had planned to stay there. But after opening their first shop in downtown Birmingham, the company is opening its roastery and corporate headquarters nearby.

The Birmingham location below Whitmire Lofts is the company's first, but has a location in Chattanooga that should open in two weeks and another in New Orleans that's set to open in two months.

"We have a really aggressive growth strategy in place," Revelator spokeswoman Meredith Singer said. "We want to form partnerships with restaurants, cafes, hotels and have them carry our products - if it's the right fit."

Additional Nashville and Atlanta locations should both open by early summer. By the end of 2016, the company plans to have 30 to 40 locations across the South.

Revelator sells craft coffee - only specialty and boutique green coffees will be purchased, and all coffees will be roasted in small, profiled batches. But the shelf life on really good coffee is limited, Singer said - which made Birmingham the ideal place to roast it.

"We want to bring a really great coffee to the South. Birmingham, it's just a great location and there's a lot of raw space and a lot of opportunity," Singer said. "It's centrally located and that was really the core idea."

Singer said major players who ship coffee throughout the country have to over-roast their beans to make them keep. So when Revelator planned to ship coffee elsewhere, it would have to locate its roastery in the center.

"We're very focused on the South, and we want to be able to drive our coffee within a reasonable circumference of where we are based," Singer said. "It's going to help us maintain the integrity of our product."

Birmingham's Appleseed Workshop is renovating the 10,000 square foot warehouse at 730 1st Ave. N., just west of Interstate 65. Appleseed also designed Revelator's first store.

"It's a nice 1970s warehouse, it's really well built with some ribbon windows in there," said Michael Gibson, president and principle architect at Appleseed. "The goal is to bring the Revelator aesthetic into it. It's going to be kind of like an office and what they call 'the lab,' which is where they test different brews and different methods."

Appleseed Chief Operating Officer Jeremy McDermott said he believes downtown Birmingham's revitalization helped draw Revelator to open its roastery here.

"When they built their first store in Birmingham we ended up working with them ... we're excited to be someone who helped change the direction for the company," McDermott said.