Collection: Topo Torréfaction 🇫🇷

Topo Torréfaction is one of the youngest names on the Lyon coffee scene, and it cheerfully embraces that status. Registered in October 2025, the company set itself a mission that breaks with the prevailing seriousness of specialty coffee: to make specialty coffee simple, playful and accessible, without giving an inch on lot quality. The name sets the tone: in French, giving someone "le topo" means giving them the lowdown, not a lecture. And the house slogan, "Métro, boulot, Topo" (a play on the French phrase for the daily grind), sets the tone for a brand that prefers a wink to insider talk.

Behind this light tone is a very complementary duo. Charlotte Crochard roasts, Cristian Terceros Cortez sources. She comes from the counter, he comes from Bolivia. Together, they select unusual terroirs rarely showcased in France, from Venezuela to Nicaragua by way of Uganda, with coffees scored above 80 points on the specialty scale, the threshold that separates specialty coffee from the rest of world production.

From Brooklyn to the Coffee Hub in Caluire

Charlotte's revelation goes back to 2019, in a Brooklyn café. She tasted her first specialty coffee there, a filter brewed on a Moccamaster, and keeps a precise physical memory of it, a cup "so sweet and expressive" that she says she can still remember the feeling in her mouth. Already a coffee drinker, she switched for good that day. Years followed behind the machines as a barista, learning the bean, the ratios and the knack that separates a decent cup from a memorable one. Roasting came as a natural extension: mastering the roast to master the whole aromatic chain.

Today, Charlotte roasts in Caluire, on the edge of Lyon, within the Coffee Hub Community, a shared ecosystem of specialty coffee professionals. The workshop lines up a 12kg roaster, a brewing lab where cuppings and recipe trials take place, and a storage space designed to preserve green coffee as well as freshly roasted coffee. This shared setting, connected to the region's producers, importers and baristas, lets Topo roast to order, in small batches, rather than letting stock go stale.

Bolivia, Direct Line

The other half of Topo is Cristian Terceros Cortez. A Bolivian entrepreneur, he has taken on the role of carrying his native country's coffees beyond its borders, championing the work of small local producers. At Topo, he handles everything you cannot see in the cup: clear contracts with the farms, controlled transport, careful storage of the green coffee. This direct line to Bolivia, set to enrich the range, feeds the company's stated positioning as "specialty coffee from unusual terroirs".

The rest of the time, Topo cultivates direct contact. On Saturdays, the brand's stall sets up at the Montchat market, in Lyon's 3rd arrondissement, a stone's throw from the company's registered office. Charlotte also runs cuppings, tasting workshops and barista training, from extraction to latte art, true to the company's educational promise: to explain where coffee comes from, how to brew it and how to enjoy it without jargon. A range with punchy names, La Base, El Comandante, Masaba, completes the portrait of a young, unselfconscious roastery that is already surprisingly well-tuned.