Specialty Coffee Took Root in the Chicago Suburbs
Some coffee stories start with a business plan. Tala Coffee Roasters started with a shared love for specialty coffee and a belief that suburban communities deserved the same level of care, quality, and experience found in bigger cities.
In this video, Tala Coffee Roasters shares how that vision came together. What began in 2017 with Keith Lilja, Stefan and Joanna Tong, and later Ryan Hickman, has grown into something much bigger than a single coffee shop. Today, Tala includes three cafe locations, a roastery, coffee classes, a delivery service called Neighborly, and a loyal community that keeps showing up for what the team is building.
Their story is about growth, but it is also about staying approachable, serving people well, and making specialty coffee feel welcoming.
A dream that started in Libertyville
The roots of Tala Coffee Roasters go back to 2017, when Keith Lilja, Stefan, and Joanna Tong were talking about what coffee could look like in Libertyville, Illinois. They had worked in coffee before and had seen how exciting specialty coffee could be, both in quality and in service.
Around the same time, Keith’s friend Ryan Hickman was ready for a change after years in the pizza business. He asked a simple question: do you want to open your own coffee shop?
That question helped set everything in motion.
Tala began in a small 900-square-foot warehouse unit. In the early days, the team was roasting coffee, selling online, and doing farmers markets. It was a humble start, but the purpose was clear from the beginning: bring specialty coffee to the suburbs in a way that felt open, friendly, and easy to connect with.
How Tala has grown
That original idea has now turned into a much larger operation.
Today, Tala Coffee Roasters includes:
- Three cafe locations
- A production roastery
- A training lab at the Libertyville headquarters
- Coffee classes
- A local coffee delivery service called Neighborly
- A growing online and wholesale presence
The first cafe opened in Highwood in 2018. Since then, Tala has continued to expand while staying rooted in the communities it serves.
Current Tala Coffee Roasters locations:
All three cafes are open daily from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Why Tala stands out
One of the strongest themes in the video is that Tala never wanted specialty coffee to feel closed off or hard to understand.
For a long time, specialty coffee could feel like it came with rules. People often felt like they needed to know the right words, ask the right questions, or already understand flavor notes and brewing methods before they could enjoy it. Tala wanted to change that.
Their team focuses on making coffee approachable. That means:
- Welcoming questions
- Talking about coffee in a clear, friendly way
- Helping customers feel comfortable
- Building real relationships with regulars
- Creating spaces that feel like part of the neighborhood
That approach has helped Tala build trust in the suburbs, where specialty coffee was not as established when the company began. Instead of making people feel like outsiders, Tala invites them into the story of what is in the cup and why it matters.
Growth that reaches beyond the cafe
Tala’s success is not only about opening more locations. The video also makes it clear that growth matters because of who it supports.
The team talks about the people behind the coffee, especially the producers and farmers. Tala sees roasting as just one part of a much bigger process. Their role is to honor the work already done at origin and help tell that story to customers.
That is why their growth matters. As more people choose specialty coffee and support Tala, that support reaches farther back through the supply chain.
The message is simple but important: when customers say yes to Tala, they are also saying yes to the farmers and producers behind the coffee.
The video also highlights just how much time and care go into coffee at the farm level. A coffee tree can take six years to produce fruit, and the first year may not even produce good results. For a farmer entering specialty coffee, that can mean a seven-year investment before seeing real return. Tala wants customers to understand that story and value the work behind every cup.
Building a better roasting operation
As Tala grew, its roasting needs changed too.
The team shared that they spent years using a 10-kilo roaster, producing roughly 15 pounds at a time. That setup worked for a while, but once the company expanded into multiple cafes and served more wholesale and online customers, they needed more capacity.
They eventually moved from roasting around 15 pounds at a time to about 45 pounds at a time. That shift reflects how far the company has come, from a small startup trying to make it work to a steady business serving a much wider audience.
The coffee bag that matches the coffee
Another part of the story connects directly to Savor Brands.
Keith, who also handles Tala’s graphic design, explains that packaging mattered from the beginning. The team wanted the coffee to be represented well, and they wanted the bags to feel as thoughtful as the product inside them.
After a few years of growth, Tala reached a point where the team could invest in the kind of packaging they had admired for a long time. Many of the specialty coffee companies they looked up to were working with Savor Brands, and Tala hoped to do the same one day.
That moment finally came, and the result was a bag design that reflects the brand clearly.
Key details behind Tala’s packaging include:
- A clean, recognizable look
- A white matte finish that feels premium
- A symmetrical flower design tied to the meaning and feeling behind the name Tala
- A structure that stands neatly on the shelf
- A zipper that helps the bag stay useful in customers’ homes
- A degassing valve placed beneath the flower graphic for a small but memorable design detail
The design is simple on purpose. Tala wanted the bag to feel beautiful and high quality, but still approachable. It needed to look like coffee, not something so overly designed that it pushed people away. That choice fits the brand well because approachability has always been central to Tala’s identity.
More than a coffee shop
What comes through most in this video is that Tala Coffee Roasters is not only serving drinks. It is building a culture around coffee in the Chicago suburbs.
The team has created places where people can learn, ask questions, try new coffees, and feel at home. They have built a business that values producers, cares about service, and pays attention to every part of the customer experience, from the first sip to the bag on the kitchen counter.
Nearly nine years after that first idea took shape, Tala has grown into a strong example of what can happen when quality, care, and community all move in the same direction.
A story still brewing
Tala Coffee Roasters started with a small team, a clear vision, and a desire to bring specialty coffee to the suburbs in a more welcoming way. Today, that vision lives on in three cafes, a roastery, a delivery service, coffee education, and a brand experience that people remember.
We are proud to have printed Tala’s coffee bags and to see how thoughtfully they use packaging as part of their customer experience. Their story is a reminder that great coffee is about more than what is in the cup. It is also about the people, the process, and the care behind it all.
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