Our Story
Founded in 2012, Halfwit Coffee Roasters began as a way to provide baristas and consumers alike with a panoramic understanding of coffee, from the first leaf to the final sip. Halfwit started as the brainchild of the team at The Wormhole Coffee, a café in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Since inception, we have sought to discover ways to combine the world of beverage science with the arts of service and hospitality. Building on a foundation of knowledge from diverse perspectives, our goal is to provide expertly roasted, seasonal coffees, industry leading training, and a competitive equipment program. We take it slow, never letting growth be our defining goal, while listening to the needs of our existing customers first. And we keep it fun, because no one should take themselves - or their coffee - too seriously.
Our mission
At Halfwit Coffee Roasters, learning is part of how we do business. With a world of coffee out there, we try to understand and respect our place in a global system, by learning about and visiting our partners at origin and always paying fair prices for coffee. We use the science of roasting to illuminate our coffees, with reverence to where they were grown and who grew them. We invest in the education of our partners with a comprehensive training program, centered on a holistic and evolving understanding of coffee, not just a mechanical overview.
Remaining true to ourselves and our partners in a competitive field means we don’t always put growth first. As a company we strive to make improvements in the communities we work in, whether it is in the coffee industry at large or simply the neighborhoods we work out of. Knowledge is a two-way street, so we build partnerships with people who share our passion for creativity and excellence, so we can help each other do what we love better.
The relationships we form are arguably the most important part of our business. Check out the complete list of the cafes, restaurants, grocers and offices that we work with.
We are a team of diverse, multi-talented personalities who bring forth their strongest assets to the company. Learn more about the individuals that make this company great.
About coffee
At Halfwit, we respect that our coffees are unique - conceived in places with their own culture, their own way of doing business, and their own special flavors. We believe coffee is a culinary art much akin to wine, and seasonal like the rest of agriculture.
The best coffees in the world are not grown by chance, they are the result of years, often decades, of cultivation and expertise. In this industry, differences in quality, price, and transparency between commercial and craft sectors are largely due to practices in the places where coffee is grown. In order for us to purchase a given coffee, we require two things: financial security in the form of fair prices, and social responsibility towards the people who work at the farms.
We pay well above commercial prices, because we know that it directly impacts quality of life. Whenever possible, we visit farms, meet with producers, and get our hands and heads inside the work that is being done at the farm level. We utilize our partnerships with importers who have the resources to be on the ground when we can’t. In all matters, we attempt to get as much information as possible so that our decision to purchase a particular coffee is an investment we can stand behind, at the social, environmental, and quality level.