Story

Madcap coffee began with a friendship and a common desire: making amazing coffee and sharing it with others.

Trevor and Ryan’s friendship began over a shared passion for coffee; its story, flavor, and ability to bring people together. Neither could imagine a better job than searching out exceptional beans, perfecting how they’re roasted and prepared, and serving them to people who would appreciate the experience. In 2008, they decided to make coffee their livelihood.

Today, Madcap runs cafes in Grand Rapids and Detroit, while roasting in Grand Rapids and distributing across the United States. Wherever you experience Madcap, we hope you’ll see, sense, and taste the experience we work so hard to create.

Passion

Every year, we taste thousands of coffees and only select the few that we find truly special, the coffee that is alive and inspires us.

The experience of coffee makes us happy, but our joy is matched with sincere conviction. We taste roughly 3,000 coffees every year. Much of our year is spent out of the country, exploring our favorite regions, visiting our partners and investigating their land. If you visit our roasting facility, it’s not uncommon to find us obsessing over the details of consistency, expression, and taste. In our cafés, each barista receives rigorous training, ensuring they’re at the top of their craft.

Serving good coffee is about following a process. Serving memorable coffee comes down to the nuances and the subtleties. Those are the places our passion resides.

Relationships

Every Madcap coffee starts with a relationship; people we work with hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder.

We’re deeply passionate about coffee and seek growers who share the same enthusiasm. Once they’re partners, they become like family. We communicate openly, visit often, and invest time and energy into their success. Every growing season, we develop goals and continue improving on some of the best coffee we’ve ever tasted.

There are growers we’ve been working with since our first year, in 2008. Other relationships are only a few years old. In any case, we’re committed to making growers successful and celebrating what they do so well. This commitment takes many forms, including the premium prices we choose to pay and the names for each Madcap coffee, which often honors the grower, farm, or region it’s from.

Team

The word “madcap” means unconventional, which describes the people at Madcap well. Our team is the heart and soul of Madcap. They hone their craft and bring levity to every situation. They try new things and pursue ideas that excite them. Whether at a café, through a wholesale partnership, or on our journal, we hope you learn more about the team behind the Madcap way.

Our standards are high and we work hard to keep them that way. At Madcap, we:

Taste every single batch of coffee we roast.
Offer top prices to farmers, sometimes doubling or tripling their income.
Ship roasted coffee in 24 hours or less.
Spend over one third of the year outside the U.S., working with growers.
Take education and training courses throughout the year.
Run a Zero Waste program, lessening our environmental impact.
Partner with specialists who share our beliefs.

Looking to join the Madcap team? We are currently hiring baristas for all three locations. Apply here: https://madcap.bamboohr.com/jobs/