“Frunchroom” is a Chicago-style slang word for the front room or the formal, rarely used sitting room that you usually find at the front of the house. When pronounced, it sounds more as if the speaker is saying “French room” quickly due to the thick Chicago accent that started this casual usage of the term.

Mastercol – Terra is our first fresh-crop coffee of the new year from Huila, Colombia, arriving after an exceptional run of standout Huila lots throughout 2025. It immediately caught our attention as a double-fermented, single-varietal Caturra from Mastercol—one of our most trusted producer groups and long-term partners since 2017. This is a coffee that feels both familiar and exciting, building on everything we love about the region while offering a renewed sense of vibrancy.

This Thanksgiving marked our 5th annual Tala Turkey Trot, and a never-before-seen change of location! This year, we got to open up Highwood for the morning to have our coffee and doughnuts. A huge shoutout to Gurnee Donuts for providing us with an amazing and delicious assortment year after year. It was extremely cozy and a truly wonderful way to celebrate Thanksgiving morning together!

Summer comes but once a year and it can be difficult to keep track of all the fun plans and ideas you had at the beginning. Writing them down and creating a bucket list is one of the simplest ways to set those intentions and meet your summer goals! I wanted to see how our Tala team would do when tasked with setting those plans in motion- and got to check in to see how it went!

Tala Coffee Roasters, in addition to specialty coffee, often hosts a line of cyclists snaking their way through the cafe on weekdays and weekends–opting for more traditional fare like the single shot or Gibraltar. The history between Tala and the cycling community runs deep, extending back to when the Highwood cafe first opened its doors in 2018, and has expanded ever since.

Join us with ‘Tala To-Go” as we take our coffee beyond the café and into the heart of our local communities. Whether it’s a festival, a neighborhood market, or popular spot, we’re there with a cup in hand, discovering what makes each area around our cafes unique.

Stay awake this quarantine with our new Bunker Blend, now available in a Rations Box. This box provides you or your loved ones the main essentials: coffee and toilet paper, of course. Now you can hunker down in your bunker knowing you have everything you need.

This time of year you might find a few extra people in your home. Invited, uninvited—who really knows. Keeping the peace and putting your most hospitable foot forward always starts with coffee. Let’s make sure no one catches each other before their morning coffee. It’ll be better that way, won’t it? Here’s a few tips for the best help-yourself coffee station to impress the guests and make your life easier.

This past weekend Highwood celebrated its tenth annual Pumpkin Festival. It’s the biggest celebration of the year in Highwood—which says a lot for a town that has festivals for everything from garlic to country music to a bloody mary. The whole town transforms into a Pumpkin-lined wonderland with scaffolding two stories tall holding pumpkins carved in every imaginable variety. Our cafe sits right outside the boundaries of Pumpkin Fest, so it was a haven to locals trying to escape the crowds and visitors needing a place to warm up.