Torrefazione Italia is a high-end brand of

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...

coffee beans sold in grocery stores. It started out as its own coffeehouse chain before being acquired by Starbucks in 2003.

History

The first Torrefazione Italia café opened in

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in 1986.

Espresso Espresso (, ) is a coffee-brewing method of Italian origin, in which a small amount of nearly boiling water (about ) is forced under of pressure through finely-ground coffee beans. Espresso can be made with a wide variety of coffee beans and ...

, coffee and baked goods were served in their cafés. Umberto Bizzarri, Torrefazione's founder, teamed up with Stewart Brother's Coffee (later renamed

Seattle's Best Coffee Seattle's Best Coffee is a brand of wholesale coffee, ground coffee, and K-cup coffee that is owned by Nestlé. While Seattle's Best Coffee used to have coffeehouses in the United States, they appear to have closed down or have been converted to ...

) founder, Jim Stewart, in the mid-1980s to create Seattle Coffee Holdings. This new company built a more modern roasterie on

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in 1995 and manufactured Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia Coffee. Seattle Coffee Holdings was purchased in 1998 by AFC Enterprises and renamed Seattle Coffee Company. Torrefazione Italia expanded to other cities in North America, notably,

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, the

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, and

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. Their coffees are also wholesaled to restaurants, hotels, bakeries and cafés. Starbucks, another Seattle-based coffee company, purchased Torrefazione Italia along with Seattle's Best Coffee in 2003. Starbucks announced in 2005 that all 17 Torrefazione Italia cafés would be closed before the end of the year, and all of the San Francisco retail locations were closed on 27 October 2005. The coffee brand has been retained, however, and the coffee is available throughout the United States in coffee shops, hotels, resorts, offices, schools, hospitals, and elsewhere.

Products

Whole Bean

*Perugia *Montecatini Decaf

Ground Portion Pack

*Napoli *Montecatini Decaf

Caffè Umbria

The Bizzarri family has since started another roaster and coffee chain, Caffè Umbria, which was established by third-generation roaster Emanuele Bizzarri, the son of Umberto.Torrefazione's ex-owners open new cafe in Pioneer Square
July 13, 2005 Umbria has been roasting since 2002, and opened its first retail branch in Seattle in 2005, following Starbucks' decision to shutter the Torrefazione cafés. The first Umbria branch is in fact in the same location as the first Torrefazione Italia branch, located at 320 Occidental Avenue in Pioneer Square. Caffè Umbria's main roastery is in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle and in 2017 opened a second roastery in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago. As of May 2021 the chain operates across 4 cities: four cafes in Seattle—-three downtown and one in the Ballard neighborhood; three in Portland, Oregon—-one in the city's

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, and two downtown; two in Chicago—-one in the Bucktown roastery and one in the River North Neighborhood; and one in South Beach, Miami. The roasted coffee is sold wholesale to hotels, cafes, restaurants, and grocery stores across the US and Canada.

References