Coffee Sketcher

Sey Coffee

Properties3
descriptionThe Brooklyn micro-roastery that made very light, single-origin roasting the house style of a generation of American roasters — a roastery and coffee bar in one Bushwick room at 18 Grattan St.
tagsorganization, roaster, usa, new-york, light-roast
aliasesSEY, SEY Coffee, Sey

9 min read

Sey Coffee

Sey Coffee — stylised SEY — is a specialty coffee roaster and café at 18 Grattan St, Brooklyn, NY 11206, in the Bushwick neighbourhood (SEY Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23). It describes itself as “a contemporary micro roastery proudly based in Brooklyn, New York,” in pursuit of “the finest, most dynamic, and complex coffees we can by developing, supporting, and progressing relationships throughout the supply chain” (SEY Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23).

It was founded by Lance Schnorenberg and Tobin Polk (Nordic Style Coffee Guide, accessed 2026-07-23; Mast Market, via the research report).

Why it belongs in this wiki: most companies here are known for something they bought — an auction lot, a record price, a farm. Sey is known for something it didn’t do. It roasts as little as it can get away with. The whole proposition is that if you buy carefully enough, the roaster’s job is to stay out of the way, and the cup should taste of the farm and the processing rather than of fire. That position — very light, very clean, one origin at a time, the producer named on the bag — became the default aesthetic for a wave of American roasters in the years after Sey opened.

The company

AttributeDetail
BrandSEY (stylised in capitals)
Base18 Grattan St, Brooklyn, NY 11206 — Bushwick
FoundersLance Schnorenberg, Tobin Polk
ModelRoastery and coffee bar in the same room, plus subscription and wholesale
StyleVery light, single-origin roasting; small lots, named producers
Earlier nameLofted Coffee, before the Sey rebrand (see the verification note below)

The roastery and the bar share one space, so customers drink in front of the machine that roasted what they are drinking (Nordic Style Coffee Guide, accessed 2026-07-23). That is not a detail of decor — it is the transparency argument made architecturally.

To verify — when Sey began, and the Lofted Coffee era

Four different start dates circulate and no two sources agree. Mast Market says the company was founded in 2013 and that the founders “began by roasting tough-to-find beans under the name Lofted Coffee before rebranding to Sey … and opening a Bushwick flagship in 2017.” A Coffee Anthology post on Facebook says “founded in 2010 by Lance Schnorenberg and Tobias Polk.” Sey’s LinkedIn company page shows 2014 with no label explaining what the year refers to. CoffeeSter says the Bushwick café “opened in 2016.” Sey’s own About page settles none of it. It was read directly for this note on 2026-07-23 and contains no founding year, no founders’ names, and no mention of Lofted Coffee (SEY Coffee — About). What is safe to say: a Lofted Coffee period preceded the Sey brand, and the Bushwick space opened in the mid-2010s. The specific years are not established. Note also that the founder’s first name appears as both Tobin and Tobias Polk across sources.

Roasting and sourcing

Sey buys small single-origin lots with the producer clearly identified, and roasts them very light — the Nordic Style Coffee Guide places the company “at the very top of modern light roasting, defined by producer first transparency, meticulous green buying, and very light, exact roasting,” with a preference for “clean, expressive, washed coffees” that show the coffee rather than the roast (Nordic Style Coffee Guide, accessed 2026-07-23).

The company’s own framing is the same idea in its own words: roast development “ensures that the end product is nothing more—or less—than perfectly developed,” and the buying policy is to take coffees that inspire them “regardless of cost or lot size,” with “complete transparency in our practices to ensure that we are held accountable” (SEY Coffee — About, accessed 2026-07-23).

Two things are worth unpacking there for a reader new to this.

Light roasting means stopping the roast early, before the sugars caramelise far and before any roast bitterness develops. It preserves acidity and the aromatics that came from the farm and the Washed process or Natural process fermentation, and it is unforgiving: a lightly roasted coffee that was mediocre green tastes thin and sour, with nothing to hide behind. Choosing to roast light is therefore also a claim about the quality of your green buying.

Producer-first transparency means naming the farm and the person on the bag, and publishing what you know about the lot. Like the direct trade language used by Equator Coffees, it is a company describing its own practice — there is no auditor behind it, unlike an organic or Fairtrade certification. What makes it checkable is the specificity: a named producer and a named lot can be traced.

Coffees listed against Sey by third-party guides show the shape of the buying — Ethiopian and Kenyan washed lots, Colombian producer lots, single farms rather than blends (Nordic Style Coffee Guide, accessed 2026-07-23).

The Finca Sophia connection

Sey has offered a 2022 natural Geisha from Finca Sophia, the ultra-high-altitude farm in Panama’s Chiriquí highlands (Sey Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23) — a fact already recorded on the Finca Sophia note. It is a small but useful link in this wiki’s map: the farm is part-owned by the founders of Equator Coffees, a Californian roaster, and Sey is one of the outside roasters buying from it. The same coffee reaches drinkers through two completely different companies on two coasts.

Example lot — Esayas Beriso, Buku Sayisa

One Sey lot is documented in unusual numeric detail by a third-party coffee database: Esayas Beriso, Buku Sayisa from Guji, Ethiopia — Washed process, 2,350 m, heirloom varieties, 2021 harvest, sold in a 318 g bag at 2.05 per ounce (Cherrybook Coffee, accessed via the research report). The same coffee — Esayas Beriso, Buku Sayisa — appears in the Nordic Style Coffee Guide’s list of Sey coffees, which independently confirms that Sey has bought this lot (Nordic Style Coffee Guide, accessed 2026-07-23).

To verify — the numbers on the Esayas Beriso lot

The altitude, bag weight, price and per-ounce figure above come from one aggregator page (Cherrybook Coffee), not from Sey. The existence of the lot is corroborated; the figures are not. No cupping score is given anywhere for it. Retail prices also change every season, so treat the $23.00 as a 2021-harvest snapshot rather than a current price.

Recognition

Sey’s own homepage states it was named “2019’s Best Coffee Shop in America by Food and Wine” (SEY Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23). Mast Market independently refers to the same recognition — “Best Coffee Shop in America from Food & Wine” — without giving a year (via the research report).

To verify — the Food & Wine award

The year (2019) is self-reported on Sey’s own site, and the exact title and category of the award were not checked against Food & Wine’s original published list for this note. The award itself is corroborated by a second source; its year and precise wording are not.

Beyond that, Sey’s standing rests on commentary rather than measurement. CoffeeSter describes it as having “quickly became one of New York’s most admired modern roasters, known for extremely clean, delicate light roasting and a luminous, minimalist café and brand design,” and argues its approach has been “widely influential among a younger generation of roasters,” helping “reframe New York as a center of cutting-edge specialty coffee” (via the research report). That is a specialty retailer’s editorial judgement, not data — reasonable, widely shared, and not independently measurable.

What is not documented

The research behind this note looked specifically for auction results, cupping scores and prices paid tied to Sey — in Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence, Specialty Coffee Association and Coffee Quality Institute records — and found none. No lot IDs, no numeric scores, no winning bids.

That absence is meaningful rather than a gap in the search. Compare Klatch Coffee or Angelino’s Coffee, US roasters whose entire presence in this wiki is a record auction price. Sey’s public record is built on how it buys and how it roasts, not on what it has won. If Sey has ever bid at a public auction, that has not been published in anything consulted here.

To verify — ownership and company structure

Public sources name founders and leaders but nowhere document the legal ownership — no entity name, no members or shareholders, no corporate filings. Whether Lofted Coffee and SEY are the same legal entity under a new name, or a successor company, is likewise unrecorded. Do not describe either founder as “the owner” on the strength of the sources listed below.

Sources

  1. SEY Coffee — official homepage — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. SEY Coffee — About — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. SEY Coffee — Café — returned HTTP 429 (rate-limited) on 2026-07-23; not read
  4. SEY Coffee — 2022 Finca Sophia Gesha, Panama — accessed 2026-07-23 (via the Finca Sophia note)
  5. Nordic Style Coffee Guide — Sey — accessed 2026-07-23
  6. Mast Market — Sey It Beautifully — returned HTTP 429 on 2026-07-23; content cited via the research report
  7. CoffeeSter — Sey Coffee, Coffee Roaster — cited via the research report, 2026-07-23
  8. Cherrybook Coffee — 2021 Esayas Beriso; Buku Sayisa, Ethiopia by Sey Coffee — cited via the research report, 2026-07-23
  9. SEY Coffee — LinkedIn company page — cited via the research report, 2026-07-23
  10. CoffeeByMe — SEY Coffee, light roast single origins from Brooklyn — cited via the research report, 2026-07-23
  11. HYUNAH Coffee Club — SEY — cited via the research report, 2026-07-23
  12. Coffee Anthology — Facebook post introducing Sey Coffee — cited via the research report, 2026-07-23

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