Vertical Coffee Roasters

Vertical Coffee Roasters is a Zurich-area specialty roaster run by Simone Ernst and Denise Morf, operating out of a roastery in Unterlunkhofen AG, roughly 25 kilometers southwest of the city. What sets Vertical apart in Switzerland's increasingly competitive specialty scene is its explicit orientation toward endurance and elite sports — cycling in particular — woven into the brand from the product names outward. The roastery has become, as granfondo-cycling.com noted, "synonymous with the world of elite sports in Switzerland."

Ernst and Morf built Vertical around a stated goal of making coffee "tasty, fun and approachable," a deliberate counterweight to the exclusivity that can calcify around specialty coffee culture. The sports angle is not cosmetic: the roastery organizes its own cycling events under the Vertical Brevet banner, runs a mobile coffee truck for event catering, and maintains a Zurich coffee lab offering barista training and workshops, according to The Way to Coffee. The community-building ambition is legible throughout — this is a roaster that wants to meet cyclists at the ride, not just sell them beans afterward.

The current lineup runs from espresso blends to single-origin filter offerings, with origins drawn primarily from East Africa and Latin America. Products include the Kenya Ichuga AA (filter roast, CHF 17.50), Colombia La Providencia (filter, CHF 16.50), and Colombia Los Amigos (espresso, CHF 16.50), alongside house blends like Breakaway and Base Camp — names that double as ride-culture shorthand. The Queen K Espresso, a likely nod to the Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, underscores how deep the endurance-sport vocabulary runs in the product range.