Halfwit Coffee Roasters

4200 W Diversey, Chicago, IL

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.

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.