Driven by the desire to make coffee approachable, cool and fun in our part of the world as well as to combine our passion for sports with this tasty source of energy, we set out to start our roastery at the beginning of 2010. We named it Gipfelstürmer Kaffee (German for "Peak Performer") to highlight our love for the outdoors and the ambition to excel.

Through curiosity and constant learning, we quickly became one of Switzerland's leading Specialty Coffee roasteries, spreading the coffee love and building a community around it.

We built our original coffee van - a 1978 Volkswagen T2b - and started serving our coffee at events. We also opened (2014) and closed (2016) one of the first coffee shops serving Specialty Coffee in Zurich: Benzin und Koffein.

In late 2016 we rebranded to Vertical Coffee Roasters for everyone’s better understanding and pronunciation in order to reach a broader audience. Since then, we have focused on roasting the tastiest beans we can find and taking our coffee trucks to every corner of our small country - sharing many wonderful coffee moments with all kinds of lovely people and putting a smile on every face.

Our main goal always was - and still is - to make coffee fun, approachable and most of all, bring people together and build a community.