The Story
Metric Coffee was founded in 2013 by Xavier Alexander, a former head roaster at Intelligentsia Coffee, and Darko Arandjelovic, who owned Caffe Streets.
The idea originated over tacos and beer at Big Star in spring 2012, where the two met and began crafting their vision for a Chicago roastery.
Alexander had been working at Intelligentsia since 2009, honing his skills at what he considered “the greatest coffee company on the planet at the time,” but felt something was missing—a platform to express himself through their own brand and art.
The founders signed a lease on their Fulton Market space in 2013, purchasing a 1961 Probat UG 15 roaster sight unseen from Germany eight months earlier.
What arrived was essentially “a heap of unusable metal,” but with characteristic Chicago grit, they rebuilt the roaster themselves in a tiny rented garage over the course of a year.
For the first three years, Metric operated primarily as a wholesale business, supplying coffee to some of Chicago’s best restaurants and shops, before opening their roastery café in 2016.
Since beginning as the sole employees, Alexander and Arandjelovic have grown Metric to a staff of 13.
They’ve become a fixture in Chicago’s thriving culinary scene, supplying notable restaurants like Avec, Lula Cafe, Cellar Door Provisions, Goddess and The Baker, and Beatrix.
The company recently earned recognition as #95 on the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops list.
Sourcing & Relationships
Metric focuses on a smaller range of countries, allowing them to grow each relationship intentionally and add value to the way they buy from each producing partner.
Co-founder Xavier Alexander serves as the company’s green coffee buyer, traveling to places like Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Peru to source coffees directly from farms they have vested interest in.
The team builds close relationships with coffee producers around the world—people they know by name—sourcing beans responsibly from countries like Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Kenya.
Metric is guided by radical transparency and the transformative power of a fair price, visiting small coffee producers across the world to hand-pick the very best lots of the season.
They source from established partners, paying high premiums and publishing transparency reports to offer real full-spectrum equity, believing “the future of coffee depends on it.”
In their efforts to champion quality, transparency and sustainability, they gather data from their green coffee purchasing and make it available for public review, using their power as coffee roasters to pay meaningful rather than menial prices.
The company has begun the journey toward B Corp certification to increase public transparency and accountability, joining a community of like-minded businesses that share their values while embracing verification of their social and environmental performance.
They partner directly with producers, farms, and cooperatives that align with their values of environmental stewardship and social responsibility, supporting a supply chain that benefits farmers and promotes long-term impact.
Roasting Philosophy
All of Metric’s coffees are roasted on their self-restored 1961 Probat UG 15, and the vintage, built-to-last machine produces exceptionally well balanced, sweet, and clean coffees.
For them, it represents the perfect meeting of old world method and modern technology.
While antique German roasters are popular at the top end of specialty coffee roasting, Metric went the extra step to restore and customize theirs over the course of a year, crediting the process as allowing them to learn about their roaster inside and out.
Their team roasts meticulously in their antique Probat roaster, with each batch serving as a testament to their dedication to providing customers with an unparalleled coffee experience.
In addition to their vintage UG15, they now also roast on an antique Probat P25 under the watchful eye of their talented roasting team.
Their roasting philosophy focuses on highlighting the natural flavors of each origin, avoiding overly dark, smoky roasts in favor of clean, balanced profiles with notes of citrus, berries, florals, or chocolate depending on the bean.
Every coffee is roasted with precision to highlight the unique characteristics of its origin, whether it’s a juicy Ethiopian natural or a crisp washed Colombian, with their approach focusing on showcasing clarity, balance, and complexity in every cup through both single-origin offerings and signature blends designed for espresso, drip, or manual brew methods.
Their “Made by Humans” motto reflects their belief that there are people behind every bag—not just those roasting and bagging the coffee, but producers and importers who all collaborated to make each cup possible.
What to Try
Metric’s standout offering is their Hellion cold brew, available on draft and nitro at their café, and also bottled to-go.
Their Big Riff blend serves as a versatile option, merging convenience and consistency for drip coffee with notes of stone fruit and dark chocolate in a perfectly balanced yet bold cup, while their En Masse blend works perfectly for espresso, offering a medium-roast sourced from Central and South America.
Their La Palestina Blend showcases a collaboration between second-generation coffee farmers, offering distinctive tasting notes like lemon lime soda, red grape, and elderflower water.
At their café, you’ll find Metric’s house blend, a rotating selection of single-origin coffees, espressos, and a “barista’s choice” poured over Chemex, while pour-over options let you explore single-origin coffees in more depth.
Seasonal signature drinks like honey lavender lattes or shaken espresso tonic offer creative twists for those looking to experiment.
Subscribers to their newsletter receive exclusive access to off-menu single origin micro-lots.
The roastery functions as an educational hub, frequently hosting cuppings, tastings, and classes that welcome both industry professionals and curious newcomers, providing opportunities to deepen coffee knowledge, learn about different origins, and develop your palate.
Visitors can often catch the roasting process in action through windows into the roasting area, adding an educational layer to the café experience.