A Tala Timeline
As we approach Tala’s Birthday Month, we reflect on the eight years of history we have under our belt. Whether you’ve been with us since day one or are just joining us on the journey, we hope you’ll enjoy taking a little walk with us down memory lane.
March 2017
Technically, our Tala journey began in March 2017 when the four of us quit our jobs to work full-time on this new venture. We rented a small warehouse in Libertyville (which is now the center bay of our Roastery & Cafe), and set out on starting a business. During those first few months, we established our core values, sourced our first roaster, designed our blends, contracted coffees, built out our website, and organized several summer farmers market booths.
June 2017
We officially launched our website and began selling coffee to the public on June 7th, 2017. It was also day one of our first summer market—the Ravinia Farmers Market. It was a surreal experience to have people immediately tasting and loving our coffee on day one.
July 2017
We serendipitously got connected with who would become our future cafe landlord only a few weeks after launching the company. Preservation Properties was looking to buy the former Highwood Fire Station, and got in contact with us about the potential of us being their first tenants. This began a process of village approval for the sale of the property and eventually the transformation from a decommissioned fire station to a multi-unit retail space.
Ryan’s son, Evan, sanding family heirloom barn wood for the cladding of the Highwood bar.
For us, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Connecting with such a passionate and dedicated landlord so early in the process meant that we knew where our first cafe would be over a year before we opened. This afforded us the opportunity to focus our efforts on our roastery for the first few months and then hit the ground running as soon as our space in the former fire station was ready.
May 2018
We officially started our cafe build-out in May with painting, building our bar, installing tables, etc. As always, we did much of the build-out ourselves with the help of friends and family. When we sit in the Highwood Cafe, we all have flashback memories of late nights installing high-top tables into the brick (and going through about 4 bits along the way), or building cabinets, or painting walls.
In addition to build-out, we spent our summer designing our mainstay specialty drinks, interviewing, hiring, and designing a robust barista training program that we continue to hone and use today. As difficult as it was to have over a year of operating without a cafe, it also allowed us the time and marign to intentionally attend to each aspect of our new cafe, in many ways making us what we are today.
Keith, Stefan, Joanna, and Ryan celebrating the one year anniversary of opening the Highwood Cafe.
August 2018
On August 11th, 2018 we officially opened our Highwood Cafe doors. It was a beautifully sunny day, and we got to meet so many folks who would become long-time regulars. We were immediately blown aways by Highwood and the surrounding community that showed up to support us as we opened and continued coming back day after day.
August 2019
We celebrated our first Highwood Cafe anniversary with a huge party. Celebrating one year of our cafe was so exciting and humbling as so many people came to celebrate and join in the fun. We were blown away that people would come out for something like this and be so excited about something as seemingly small as a one year anniversary. This also set the tone for something that became a big party of our company DNA—celebration! We continue to find fun ways to celebrate and engage the community when we can—like our upcoming company Birthday Bash on June 7 & 8th!
November 2019
We revamped our previous coffee subscription service into what you now know as Coffee Club. This major shift added new perks, extra options, and streamlined services for our members. This coffee subscription continues to be a versatile and convenient coffee subscription, as well as the cheapest way to enjoy your Tala coffee! Learn more about Coffee Club here.
march 2020
As we are all well aware, March 2020 marked a distinct change for everyone as COVID-19 suddenly changed everyone’s lives dramatically. We were extremely fortunate to avoid any closures through the entire lockdown. We were thankfully able to quickly transition to take-out only options as the state’s regulations required, and launch a curbside delivery website overnight to accommodate the changing requirements. Our staff was phenomenal in adjusting to new standards and navigating new systems at the drop of a hat. If you were one of our customers during COVID, you may remember how hard our staff worked to be a bright spot in each person’s day as they walked through our doors during such a difficult time.
During the many months of lockdown, we also launched two of our most iconic products: The Bunker Blend, which we sold as a 2Ib bag with a roll of toilet paper, and the Vaccine Blend (later, of course), which we sold as two large pill bottles filled with coffee. As goofy as it was, we actively looked for ways to engage our community and bring a smile to the faces of people who were going through a hard time. It was especially fun to try to engage beyond the walls of our cafes, as there were still so many people staying home and unable to risk a trip to the cafe to connect with someone. From simple “Connect” postcards to funny blends, we embraced the opportunity to bring a smile to people’s faces even outside the cafe.
summer 2020
Early summer 2020, we launched our free Neighborly Delivery program, which brings coffee and coffee supplies to your door for a handful of local zip codes. Although we had already been planning to launch a similar service, the timing with the pandemic was pretty perfect, as we became able to bring coffee to those who couldn’t leave their homes! At this time, we also launched our draft lattes, which we offer at all of our cafes and via Neighborly so folks can enjoy lattes at home with ease.
April 2021
In April, we expanded our roastery to absorb the unit next to us to use for more storage, more office space and expand our roastery production to accommodate online and wholesale growth.
The same month, we got an unexpected lead on a cafe space in Winnetka, and, although we weren’t actively looking for a new cafe at the time, we were intrigued by this unique opportunity. We submitted a proposal to the village in early April, thus beginning the months-long proposal bid process in competition with a few other businesses for the 93 Green Bay Road location. Spoiler alert: We eventually won the bid.
summer 2021
You may remember that the world slowly began to emerge out of COVID in the summer of 2021. After many months of gloom and worldwide tragedy, we decided to embrace our fun side and transform our cafe into a tropical paradise all summer long with what we called Tala Tiki Time. We embraced Tiki-inspired summer drinks, wore Hawaiian shirts behind the bar, decorated the whole cafe, and launched a fun line of merchandise.
OCtober 2021
We presented our proposal for the new cafe to the Village of Winnetka alongside two other businesses. We were—in many ways—the underdog of the crew, being the smallest and newest business to submit. We did, however, have a proven track record with repurposing a building and bringing to life a community space in Highwood. Although we weren’t sure what direction the village would want to take, we were sure that our concept could offer something special to the Indian Hill District and eagerly awaited their decision, which didn’t come until after a few more meetings and revised proposals extending for several months.
January 2021
The third unit in our roastery building became vacant, and we began to explore the idea of expanding our operations and adding a cafe to our roastery. The added space would allow us to implement a full-scale kitchen to produce our syrups and expand our cold brew operations, which would be necessary for opening our Winnetka cafe. The space would also allow us to have a dedicated Training Lab which we knew would be of utmost importance when adding more staff to support our new cafe. Adding a cafe to that design was a no-brainer, of course, because it was too without one and it made our dream of a roastery-cafe combination come full-circle. At that point in time, we had no idea how long and arduous the process would be. The roastery location—zoned as general industrial—needed to have several variances and special use permits pass before we could move forward with build-out.
April 2022
It wasn’t until April 2022 that we were officially chosen as the preferred concept for the 93 Green Bay Rd. lot in Winnetka, and thus began the more intensive dreaming, planning, and problem-solving. The site presented many challenges that we needed to iron out before moving on, from the on-site parking limitations to the no-dig zones to the small footprint of the space itself. We spent many months in meetings alongside village staff tackling various aspects of the vision together before any official agreements were signed. Although the process was long, we look back on this time as a fun and exciting journey alongside the village to create something truly special for the Indian Hill District.
June 2022
We celebrated our five year anniversary as a company with a giant party at our roastery—something we brought back last year and are continuing again this year (join us June 7th and 8th!). We were amazed at the turnout of people at this event, especially since so many people had never been back to our roastery before. This was a huge encouragement to us as we also were hoping to open a cafe and were concerned about the traffic to the site.
October 2022
After several city meetings and presentations, our variances and special use permits were approved by the Libertyville Village Council. This began the next long process: acquiring building permits for a very complicated project. Throughout the permit approval process, we had to continually refine the design of our cafe to comply with more and more oddities, mostly pertaining to the distinct variances we had and the limitations they set forth. The design you see today—with the prominent planters and comfy bench seating—was an eleventh-hour capacity limitation (which was later increased) that forced us to reconsider the entire design.
November 2022
We officially received building permits for our Winnetka Cafe and began build-out. We spent the winter months focused on demo, which we did almost entirely ourselves. The ceramic-coated panels that you see today on the outside of the building are original construction, and they were actually mimicked in the interior as well—every square inch of the walls and ceiling were original interlocking metal paneling held together by rubber gaskets and rusted flat head screws. We removed every panel one by one in the whole building with painstaking effort, hoping to save and reuse as many as we could. In the end, we could only salvage a small handful to the point of being usable, and they are the panels that currently line the bar inside the cafe.
As we got to work on the inside of the building, the village set out to transform the adjacent parking lot and the entire surrounding site. Although we had together cast an incredible vision for the site, it was sometimes difficult to imagine as we watched the whole site, both inside and out, turn to a pit of dirt before it was built back into something beautiful.
Joanna sketching plans for the interior build-out.
may 2023
We received building permits for our Libertyville space and officially started build-out on the unit. In true Tala fashion, we did as much work ourselves as we could muster. After tackling the Winnetka demo ourselves, Libertyville felt like a walk in the park. Our contractors could begin work very early on in the process as this location didn’t present the same challenges the Winnetka building did. Tackling two distinct build-out projects while also managing a cafe and roastery was quite a challenge, but the eventual payoff was worth the effort.
September 2023
We opened our Libertyville Cafe in September to wide support from the community. We were once again so blown away by the community that showed up to support us as a small business. One of our largest concerns (and continued critiques from others) was whether or not we would get traffic to our little, obscure, tucked-away corner in Libertyville. From day one, we have been pleasantly surprised by the number of folks who have found us and continue to come and support us in spite of being off the beaten path.
We had little time to enjoy the fruit of our labor before turning our attention back to Winnetka, where we were actively in the final stages of build-out. The day after opening our Libertyville Cafe, we were tiling the bathroom walls in Winnetka (again, ourselves—don’t look too closely!).
November 2023
We opened our Winnetka Cafe at the end of November. Getting to this long-awaited point felt like a miracle in many ways, but we were overjoyed to finally be at the finish line. We had instant support from the community, who had been eagerly following along with the progress of the site for years, as residents were desperate to see this gateway site transformed into something more valuable for the community.
February 2024
We launched a small food program in our Winnetka Cafe, offering breakfast sandwiches, wraps, salads, etc. to those wanting more than just their caffeine fix.
April 2024
We launched our public coffee classes—something we had been dreaming of for many years. Ever since we first dreamed up the expansion of our roastery, we wanted to include a Training Lab to facilitate our own internal staff training, but were ultimately just as excited to be able to offer similar training to the public. We currently offer two classes focused on coffee-tasting and brewing, and are looking to add more advanced barista classes in the future as well.
October 2024
We launched food at our Libertyville Cafe, repeating the same delicious menu we have in Winnetka. Read more about our food menu on our recent blog!
Ryan, Joanna, Keith, and Stefan singing “Happy Birthday” to Tala at the 7-year Birthday Bash Celebration.
June 2024
We celebrated seven years as a company on June 7th, 2024, and brought back our five-year-anniversary party with some expanded fun. We had a weekend celebration that included pop-ups, prizes, giveaways, roasting demos, and more. We’re bringing this same fun back this June with our Birthday Bash Celebration June 7-8!
2024-2025
So what’s been happening since then? With so many years of forward-facing growth, we’ve focused most of our efforts in 2024 and 2025 on internal improvements—from operations to staff training and everything in between. We are thankful to have a break from some of the intensive outward efforts and really focus on the quality of our team’s experience and the smooth operation of our small business.
What’s Next?
Who knows! Follow along with us as we go along. We’re so thankful to have you on the journey.