Boréal Coffee Shop

Fabien Decroux and Julian Caron-Lys opened Boréal in 2008, Geneva's first dedicated specialty coffee shop, after Decroux discovered the category working in Australia. In 2012 the pair brought roasting in house and co founded Roasters United, a direct trade collective working with small farming cooperatives in Latin America that includes interest free pre payments to growers.

The Rue du Stand address is the largest of Boréal's five Geneva rooms, recently renovated into a mix of workstations, communal high tables, and lounge seating that pulls in both students and the surrounding banking district's office crowd. Beans are exclusively organic, and long daily hours keep the counter running from early morning well into the evening.