Coffee Sketcher

MAME

Properties3
descriptionThe Zürich roastery and café group founded in 2016 by Emi Fukahori and Mathieu Theis — two competition baristas who built a business out of the championship stage, and the closest thing Switzerland has to a competition-coffee institution.
tagsorganization, roaster, cafe, switzerland, zurich, geneva, japan, competition
aliasesMAME Coffee, MAME Roastery, KURO MAME, mame.coffee

10 min read

MAME

MAME is a specialty coffee roastery and café group based in Zürich, Switzerland, founded in 2016 by Emi Fukahori and Mathieu Theis, who “met through coffee championships and wanted to create a community where people can enjoy specialty coffee at its best” (MAME — About us, accessed 2026-07-23).

The name is the Japanese word for “beans” — MAME’s own account says the Japanese reference “reflects a deep dedication to specialty coffee and a fascination with its craft” (same source). Emi was born in Japan; Mathieu was born in France; both now live in Zürich.

What makes MAME worth a note is the direction the business runs in. Most roasteries in this wiki got famous by buying a famous coffee. MAME got famous the other way round: two people won national and world titles first, then built cafés, then a roastery, and only in 2020 started sourcing and roasting their own green coffee. The competition stage is the origin story, not the marketing afterthought — the company sells a “competition subscription” alongside its ordinary coffee subscription, and says plainly, “We love participating in coffee competitions, as we believe it is a great way to push our knowledge forward” (MAME homepage, accessed 2026-07-23).

The company

AttributeDetail
NameMAME (Japanese for “beans”)
Legal entityMAME Roastery GmbH — a Swiss limited-liability company
Registered addressUetlibergstrasse 65/67, 8045 Zürich
SignatoriesEmi Fukahori and Mathieu Theis
BaseZürich, Switzerland
Founded2016 — first café, MAME Josef, opened October 2016
FoundersEmi Fukahori (born Japan) and Mathieu Theis (born France)
RoasteryMAME Roastery, Flüelastrasse 30, 8047 Zürich — opened November 2019, not open to the public
Own sourcing and roastingFrom 2020
BusinessCafés in Zürich and Geneva, one in Tokyo, wholesale and retail roasted coffee, coffee and competition subscriptions, equipment

Founding year, name origin, founder biographies and the 2020 sourcing date all come from MAME’s own about page; the roastery address from its own locations page. The legal name, registered address and the two founders’ signing authority come from MAME’s own imprint — the legally required company-details page every Swiss and German-speaking business site carries (MAME — Imprint, accessed 2026-07-23). The two roasting dates are a two-step, not a contradiction: the roastery site opened in November 2019, and MAME began buying and roasting its own green coffee in 2020 rather than having it roasted for them.

Note that the registered address and the roastery address are different places. Uetlibergstrasse 65/67 in Zürich district 3 is the address the company files under; Flüelastrasse 30 in district 4 is where coffee is actually roasted. That split is ordinary for a company that has moved or keeps its office apart from production, and both addresses come from MAME’s own site.

Locations

Currently listed on MAME’s own locations page (MAME — Locations, accessed 2026-07-23):

LocationAddressOpened
MAME JosefJosefstrasse 160, 8005 ZürichOctober 2016
MAME SeefeldSeefeldstrasse 19, 8008 ZürichJuly 2018
MAME RoasteryFlüelastrasse 30, 8047 Zürich (not public)November 2019
MAME PlainpalaisRue des Voisins 8, 1205 GenèveSeptember 2023
MAME Saint-GervaisBd James-Fazy 8, 1201 GenèveDecember 2023
MAME ThalwilGotthardstrasse 12, 8800 ThalwilOctober 2024
KURO MAMEKamiyacho Place E1, Toranomon 5-3-3 1F, Minato, TokyoJune 2025
MAME GertrudGertrudstrasse 22, 8003 ZürichJune 2026

Addresses and opening dates both come from the locations page, which dates every site it lists. The homepage’s claim of “6 thriving locations across Switzerland” matches this table if you count only the Swiss cafés open to the public — Josef, Seefeld, Plainpalais, Saint-Gervais, Thalwil and Gertrud — excluding the closed-to-public roastery and the Tokyo shop. The KURO MAME site in Tokyo (June 2025) is the company’s first outside Switzerland, and puts the Japanese half of the founding story on the ground in Japan; see Japan coffee market for the market it walked into.

To verify

Two MAME pages do not list the same shops, or the same dates. The about-page timeline names a MAME Bahnhofstrasse opening in October 2023, but no Bahnhofstrasse address appears on the current locations page (MAME — About us and MAME — Locations, both accessed 2026-07-23). The obvious reading is that Bahnhofstrasse has closed or moved, but neither page says so. The locations page dates Thalwil to October 2024 and Gertrud to June 2026, where the about-page timeline is silent on Thalwil and put Gertrud earlier in 2026; where the two disagree this note follows the locations page, which is the one MAME keeps current. Separately, the Day9 roaster profile (accessed 2026-07-23, via the research report) gives the Seefeld café’s address as Holbeinstrasse 25, 8008 Zürich, while MAME’s own page says Seefeldstrasse 19 — probably a relocation, but unexplained. Café footprints go stale within months; check the locations page before quoting one.

The founders’ competition record

Both founders compete, and MAME publishes the results on its own site (MAME — About us, accessed 2026-07-23):

YearPersonResult
2015Emi FukahoriSwiss Barista Champion
2016Mathieu TheisSwiss Barista Champion
2018Mathieu TheisSwiss Barista Champion; 3rd, World Barista Championship
2018Emi FukahoriSwiss Brewers Cup Champion; World Brewers Cup Champion
2019Mathieu TheisSwiss Barista Champion; 6th, World Barista Championship
2020Emi FukahoriSwiss Barista Champion
2021Emi Fukahori4th, World Barista Championship
2024Mathieu Theis8th, World Barista Championship
2026Mathieu TheisSwiss Barista Champion

Two competitions are involved and they are not the same event. The World Barista Championship is the espresso-bar contest: 15 minutes to serve espressos, milk drinks and signature drinks to judges, scored on the drinks, on technique and on the presentation. The World Brewers Cup is the filter-coffee contest: brewed by hand, judged partly blind, where the choice of coffee carries much of the score. Emi’s 2018 World Brewers Cup win — with a Laurina from Daterra in Brazil — is the single most consequential result here and is covered in full on her own note.

On the company’s division of labour, MAME’s site has Mathieu leading green-coffee sourcing and Emi competing and coaching other competitors. That is why MAME’s name turns up attached to other people’s championship routines as often as its own.

To verify

How many Swiss Barista Championship titles Mathieu Theis holds, and how his name is spelled. MAME’s own page lists four — 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2026 (MAME — About us, accessed 2026-07-23). Secondary profiles say “multiple” (Day9) or specifically “three-time” ([interview, via the research report]), which was probably accurate when written and has since been overtaken. A sponsor profile independently confirms the 2016 and 2018 titles — and adds a 2nd place in 2017 and a 3rd at the 2015 Swiss Latte Art Championship — but is undated and stops at 2018 (Urnex, accessed 2026-07-23); see Mathieu Theis for the full year-by-year record. The count also depends on which national body ran the championship in a given year; no official Swiss results archive was reachable here. His first name appears as both Mathieu and Matthieu in secondary sources; MAME’s own site uses Mathieu.

To verify

The claim that “MAME” is also an acronym of the founders’ names. One roaster profile states the name was “formed from the first letters of their names” — Ma-thieu, Em-i (Day9, accessed 2026-07-23, via the research report). MAME’s own about page gives only the Japanese-word-for-beans explanation and says nothing about initials (MAME — About us, accessed 2026-07-23). Charming, single-sourced, and not confirmed by the company.

Sourcing and style

MAME buys and roasts its own green coffee from 2020 onward, and splits its retail range into daily coffees and competition coffees — the second category being the small, expensive, unusual lots that competitors use on stage (MAME homepage, accessed 2026-07-23). Selling competition lots by subscription is a comparatively recent idea in specialty coffee, and it is the commercial expression of the same thing that makes premiumisation work: a small number of customers will pay a great deal for a coffee whose story they can follow all the way back to a stage.

To verify

No cupping scores, auction lots, prices, farms or processing methods for MAME’s coffees are documented here. Nothing consulted — MAME’s own pages included — publishes a numeric cupping score, an altitude, a processing method, or a lot price for any coffee MAME has bought or roasted, and MAME does not appear as a named buyer in any Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence or Alliance for Coffee Excellence results table consulted for this wiki. The one well-documented coffee connected to the founders is the Daterra Laurina “Frevo” lot Emi won the 2018 World Brewers Cup with, and even that has no published score or price — see Emi Fukahori. Do not attach a score, price or farm to a MAME coffee without a primary source.

To verify

Who owns how much of MAME is still not documented. The legal form is now settled: MAME’s own imprint gives the company as MAME Roastery GmbH — a Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, the Swiss equivalent of a private limited company — and names Emi Fukahori and Mathieu Theis as the two people with signing authority (MAME — Imprint, accessed 2026-07-23). What remains undocumented is the share split and whether any outside investor holds a stake: signing authority is not ownership, and no Swiss commercial-register (Zefix) extract was consulted here. “Founder-owned” is still an inference, not a corporate record.

Why it belongs in this wiki

MAME is the clearest European example of a pattern this wiki keeps running into elsewhere: the competition circuit as a business incubator. Simple Kaffa in Taipei is the same shape — a world barista title in 2016, then a café group, then a seat at the record-lot auction table. Serkan Sağsöz is another national champion turned roastery founder. The difference is that MAME’s competition identity did not fade after the trophy: it kept competing, kept placing, and turned the coaching and the competition lots into product lines. Where Simple Kaffa’s story bends toward buying power, MAME’s bends toward craft and training — and its Tokyo shop closes the loop back to the Japan coffee market that gave the company its name.

Sources

  1. MAME — Imprint, legal company details (official site) — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. MAME — About us (official site) — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. MAME — Locations (official site) — accessed 2026-07-23
  4. MAME — homepage (official site) — accessed 2026-07-23
  5. Kofio — About Us, MAME Roastery — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  6. Day9 — MAME roaster profile, Zürich — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  7. 5th Wave podcast — Precision and craft: a conversation with the founders of MAME — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  8. Founder Friday — interview with Emi Fukahori of MAME Coffee (video) — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  9. Interview with Emi Fukahori of MAME Coffee (video) — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  10. Koffeesome — MAME Coffee roastery directory entry — corroborates the 2016 founding and 2020 own-sourcing dates; cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  11. Coffee Insurrection — MAME, Zurich, Switzerland — corroborates the founding story and the Japanese “beans” name origin; cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
  12. Switzerland Tourism — Mame listing — third-party listing for MAME Josef; cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23

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