Hale Coffee Company

Ramzi Yanis, Khaldoun Toukan, and Khaled Rayyan met after moving to Toronto from Jordan to study, and their shared interest in coffee eventually became Hale, founded in 2013 near Queen and Spadina before the roastery settled into its current home inside the old Clock Factory building in the Junction Triangle. The move gave Hale room to roast on site, and the industrial unit now doubles as a training space for the independent cafes around the city that buy Hale's beans wholesale.

Every coffee on the list is sourced direct trade, with a rotating cast of lots from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Brazil making up most of the espresso and batch brew rotation. The cafe itself stays simple, a long counter facing exposed brick and factory windows, pulling a steady crowd of neighborhood regulars alongside cyclists passing through on the nearby rail path.