Our Story – Farouk Café

How Farouk Began

Farouk Café did not begin as a traditional business plan. It began during a period of personal transition and soul-searching for the founder. Coffee had already been a longtime interest, but a visit to a coffee farm changed that interest into something much deeper.

Experiencing coffee at origin (seeing how it was grown and processed, meeting the people involved, and tasting coffee unlike anything he had experienced before) created a desire to understand more. One farm visit led to another. Different coffees, processes, varieties and regions opened an increasingly larger world.

What began as curiosity became a pursuit: learning, traveling, tasting, building relationships and searching for distinctive coffees worth sharing.

That journey eventually became Farouk Café.

What We Do Today

Today, the company continues that same pursuit: travelling closer to where coffee begins and bringing distinctive coffees to customers, cafés and business partners, many of whom may never travel to the regions where their coffee is grown.

01
Travel

We travel to producing regions and spend time where the coffee is grown and processed.
02
Relationships

We meet producers, processors and coffee professionals throughout the coffee chain, and learn from their experience.
03
Evaluation

We cup and evaluate lots to understand the character of each coffee.
04
Selection

We select the distinctive coffees we want to share and bring them home.
05
Roasting in Arizona

We roast in Arizona for our customers, cafés and business partners.

That work includes Robusta as well as Arabica. Robusta is often written off as simply cheap or harsh, yet carefully grown and processed lots can offer real quality and a character of their own. We would rather let people taste that for themselves.

Where We're Going

Colombia and Vietnam are part of the story today, but they are chapters, not the limit of the company. The larger vision extends wherever exceptional and interesting coffee can be found. New origins join the site when we actually source there, with the same approach: time at origin, careful evaluation and honest information about each coffee.