So, the story goes…
In 2002, my dad and I bought a coffee roaster without so much as a location or business plan. We’d just downed about 12 or 13 shots of espresso at the Coffee Fest trade show, spotted a beautiful machine and bought it before the caffeine had a chance to wear off.
That impulsive purchase became the beginning of Metropolis Coffee Company, a Chicago-based specialty coffee roaster and wholesale coffee company founded by father and son Jeff and Tony Dreyfuss.
How Metropolis Coffee Company Started
We chose a location for our first café in Edgewater, a cool, diverse neighborhood on the far North Side of Chicago. The local high school is a melting pot — students speak more than 65 different languages!
We named our new business Metropolis Coffee Company, inspired by Plato’s concept of polis — a citadel, or community of people. A metropolis is a community of communities. Our Metropolis encompasses not only Edgewater and Chicago, but also the communities across the globe where coffee is grown, brewed and sold.
We opened Metropolis in December 2003, and our café immediately became something like Edgewater’s living room — a boisterous landing pad for kids, parents, immigrants, revolutionaries, crossing guards, retirees, cops, cabbies, students and everyone in between.
People came to hang out, talk (often loudly) over stellar coffee, enjoy authentic vibes and savor terrific local snacks. Our 2,200-square-foot, brightly painted space hosted poetry readings, fundraisers, political debates, movie nights and even something called “Retreat from Moscow Day,” when we decorated the café like a Russian winter.
Jeff and Tony Dreyfuss: The Founders of Metropolis Coffee
My dad, Jeff, is a linguist by trade. He has a Ph.D. in linguistics and speaks 11 languages. I studied philosophy and drove a cab.
We’re both “people people,” so naturally, we had to be out among the people.
My dad ran the roasting machine and would hold court between batches, pouring French presses on the fly while discussing Cyrillic and Aramaic alphabets. Customers would sit at the counter just to hang out with “the professor.”
I managed the coffee bar, building long-term relationships with our neighbors in 30-second increments.
Within a year or two, we became known not only as a cool spot to hang out, but also as a roaster of seriously good coffee. Local chefs began buying our beans for their restaurants, cafés and hotels, and we even got some terrific ink in the local papers. People began coming from all over to check us out.
Winning Roast Magazine’s Roaster of the Year
In 2007, again on a whim, we entered a roasting competition called Microroaster Roaster of the Year, hosted by our industry magazine, Roast Magazine.
The competition judges coffee quality, company story, and efforts toward sustainability and transparency — it’s the closest thing the coffee industry has to a James Beard Award.
We had no expectations. We were only three years old. But, to our great shock and pleasure, we won!
Winning Roaster of the Year opened a lot of doors. We began wholesaling nationally, not just in Chicago, and “Proudly Serving Metropolis Coffee” signs popped up in shop windows, hotel rooms and menus across the country.
Growing From a Chicago Café to a National Coffee Roaster
We quickly ran out of space. We’d been doing everything in the back of our café, so in 2008, we moved our roasting, bagging and offices to a 10,000-square-foot facility in the Andersonville neighborhood.
The space was on the second floor of a 1920s-era Art Deco-style building called The Capital Garage. We called it “The Garage,” and, in fact, we used an 80-year-old automobile elevator to move our beans in and out.
We all became necessarily adept at elevator repair.
In 2015, once again out of space, we moved to a 19th-century manufacturing building along the Chicago River near Belmont and Western. We operate out of that space today — 18,000 square feet in the city.
We’re incredibly proud to be a coffee roaster and manufacturer here, continuing Chicago’s proud tradition as a manufacturing hub. It’s a beautiful space, and we’d love for you to visit so we can show you around.
Metropolis Coffee Today
Over the years, we’ve grown into that space and, if I’m being honest, it’s starting to feel a little crowded.
Our roastery now employs more than 40 Chicagoans who roast, bag, deliver and service Metropolis Coffee to more than 1,200 wholesale accounts across 38 states, Canada, parts of Europe and the Middle East.
This year, we launched our second café at O’Hare’s Terminal 5 with our terrific partners, Sulaiman and Farhana Rahim of Midway Restaurant Development. The instantly iconic café greets passengers from around the world and says “Welcome to Chicago” the best way we know how — with a giant hot cup of Metropolis Coffee.
Our Mission: Great Coffee for Everyone
We’re still 100% locally owned by Jeff and Tony Dreyfuss and 10,000% headquartered and operated in the great city of Chicago. (Four-star salute.)
Every day, we estimate 57,000 cups of Metropolis are brewed and enjoyed in Chicagoland alone, not to mention the rest of the Metroverse!
It’s truly a privilege to make so many days a little better for so many great people. In fact, it’s our mission:
Great Coffee for Everyone.
We’re off to a solid start, don’t you think?
Thank you for taking the time to read our story.
Tony (the son) and Jeff (the father) Dreyfuss
