Pedestrian Coffee was started by Tim Taylor to get great coffee into the hands of everyday people, “because fantastic coffee isn’t just for hipsters”. His first encounter with coffee was a cup of Folgers at the age of five, and he came back to it years later between jobs fighting forest fires in Oregon and checking in travellers at O’Hare. He started the farm-to-table roastery and retailer that became Ipsento, and a decade on, with Ipsento flourishing, started Pedestrian with the same mission for cafés and homes alike. He serves on the board of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, which governs the Cup of Excellence competition, and two of his four children have been with him on trips to coffee farms.

The name is a double meaning: the everyday person walking from one place to the next, and a tongue-in-cheek nod to “ordinary”, a gentle mock of the snobbery that can come with higher-end coffee. All of the coffee is roasted to order at Pedestrian’s roastery in Logan Square and shipped every Monday. Most of it is roasted medium to light, each coffee to its own profile, and nothing is flavoured. The green coffee comes directly from farms Pedestrian has ongoing relationships with, or through sourcing partners that hold the same standards, and on average the farmer is paid 2.5 times the Fair Trade price; most of the coffees are grown organically without the certification.

The range is sorted into tiers: Elite for rare and award-winning lots, Red Label for off-the-beaten-path coffees, Green Label for straightforward ones, and the blends Jaywalker and Hitch Hiker. There are cafés in Lakeview, in Logan Square and in Andersonville at The Coffee Studio, all with order-ahead pickup, and a wholesale programme with barista training, equipment and calibration.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Pedestrian Coffee