Touchy Coffee was founded in 2018 in a historic little city situated on the Hudson River called Troy, NY. We set out to challenge the coffee routines in our community with vibrant, beautiful coffees that stand out from the farm level. From the bar at our original cafe in Troy, Superior Merchandise Company, we had an opportunity to highlight the incredible work being done by coffee growing communities around the world. Touchy Coffee was born to brighten each day by shining a light on the coffees and talented people who together make up this incredible, complex and too-often impersonal supply chain. And we can’t think of a better way to start the day :)

We find coffees that people care about. Care is such an important part of the journey from seed to cup and is also the part most immediately felt. We pay attention to the people and stories behind the coffee because when the seeds are sown with care we know that it will be illuminated on the cupping table. This is the coffee that quite literally gets us out of bed in the morning in a rush to share it with our community. When we accept stewardship of this luminous thing we enter into a relationship with the farmers and producers. Our responsibility is to contribute meaningfully to their short-term and long-term success. We do this by ensuring that adequate prices are paid to farmers for growing these beautiful coffees, supporting and encouraging healthy, sustainable agricultural and environmental practices and forging long-lasting partnerships with producers that share our commitment to quality.

When we roast coffee our goal is simple, but achieving it is complex. The plant’s genetic makeup, the earth underneath it, the careful tending and processing of the fruit – all of the things that make this coffee so special should be felt by you, the last hand to touch it. Roasting is the magic that gets the specialness of the raw coffee into your cup. Our minimal intervention ethos ironically requires an intensive methodology of precisely calibrating, measuring and refining in service of drawing out and highlighting the coffee’s best attributes. Our methods and the equipment we use are high-tech and empirical but we like to feel our way through the process in equal measure. If, when the coffee finds its way to your cup, you feel connected at least in some small way to the hand that planted the seed, we consider that the ultimate success.

We roast to order, ship fresh, and sip slow — our coffees continue tasting lovely for several weeks past the roast date.