Vertical Coffee Roasters began at the start of 2010 as Gipfelstürmer Kaffee, German for “peak performer”, a name chosen for its founders’ love of the outdoors. The idea came from a trip to the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, in 2007, where Simone raced and Denise Morf supported, and where they found themselves in a coffee origin. They first rented time on an old Probat, then set up their own roasting space with a Diedrich IR12, ready in the summer of 2011. The business took its current name in late 2016 so that more people could understand and pronounce it.

In 2011 the founders rebuilt a 1978 Volkswagen T2 that had served in the Swiss Army into a coffee van with a La Marzocco espresso machine, and the coffee trucks still go to events and catering jobs across Switzerland. From 2014 to 2016 Vertical ran Benzin und Koffein, one of the first specialty coffee shops in Zurich. As a women-run roastery, it looks for coffees produced by women, such as Juana Jimenez’s La Esperanza and Blanca Herrera’s El Coyego from Huehuetenango in Guatemala.

The range runs from everyday coffees to rotating single lots. Base Camp is the darkest roast, Breakaway pairs a fine robusta from Uganda with a Guatemalan arabica, and Queen K was created with Jan van Berkel, the Swiss Ironman triathlete, and named after the highway on Hawaii’s Big Island. Brazil Diamond, roasted for both espresso and filter, has been the cornerstone of the roastery since 2017 and now comes from a single farm, Fazenda Pinheiro in Mococa.

Cycling is part of the business too: since 2021 Vertical has organised the Vertical Brevet, a 250 km ride with 5,000 m of climbing through the Swiss Midlands, and it also runs Discovery Rides and sells route files of the loops it rides. Its coffee is poured at partner venues including 169 West in Zurich.

Partner cafés

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Vertical Coffee Roasters