Hi! My name is Théo, I am a french-german coffee professional from Munich, Germany and the founder of Avéc Coffee Roasters.

My whole life,  I always worked in hospitality/gastronomy. During school, it was a café/ice cream shop, then restaurants and catering, then serving at events and concerts. After school, I spent one year in Canada, worked as a dishwasher, then as a cook. That stayed with me back in Germany, and I stayed in kitchens, moved on to work behind the bar and in service. Being a student in university during that time had it's challenges, but it was also during on of the lockdowns that I discovered my interest in coffee. It started with one James Hoffmann Video (The French Press Recipe), and suddenly I went from not drinking coffee to following exact recipes, trying to get everything out of old, stale and preground supermarket coffee. My flatmates also had a Delonghi Dedica. We started watching all the videos about the machine (and coffee in general), and one from Kaffeemacher:innen really ignited my passion. Benjamin and Felix were talking about all the tips and tricks for the Deloghi, which resulted in us cutting off the bottom of our portafilter in our hallway. From that moment on, i knew coffee would be a big part of my life. I bought a hand grinder and started buying coffee from a local roaster. I also found a job in a café. Soon, it was not coffee specific enough for me and a job at a roastery in munich opened up. I was so excited! The roastery is called Vogelmaier, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity that i got there. I finished my last semester of Uni and started working there full time. I was eager to learn, and soon started holding workhops, meeting people in the munich coffee scene and building my own network. The longer I worked with coffee, the more I knew: I need to have my own shop one day. I started roasting our samples, became very interested in roasting, and when a job as a production roaster opened up at Pacandé, I took the opportunity. In my time there, I learned a lot. A big thank you to Dénes Rajmond, who influenced me in many ways, pushed me to take part in my first competitions and whom I attribute lot of the values, connections and my understanding of green coffee to. 

Over my time there, I started taking coffee more seriously. All my vacation days were allocated to coffee fairs, competions and origin trips, and I was lucky enough to travel the world with friends. Coffee brought me to Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Vietnam, where I got to learn about coffee production, farming and logistics. On the other hand, competing thaught me networking, dealing with high pressure situations and learning a lot, very fast. It also brought me to many coffee fairs, other countries and citys and most notably, to Seoul, where I got to coach my dear friend Niklas in the World Aeropress Championship. Through the network, friendships and professional relationships that developed over time, Avéc was born. Thank you to all the people along the way that supported and helped in any way, without you, it would not have been possible.

In the moment I left Vogelmaier, I started working on my business plan. The idea was to implement all the ideas I had about hospitality and combine them whith my ever growing knowledge, competion experience and values. Everthing I like, I took as inspiration, everything I disliked, i challanged and tried to avoid or find solutions. Over th next 2 years, it became a more and more round concept, and as I started looking for locations, I was lucky enough to hear from Vogelmaier. They were looking for another location (due to the size of their roastery), and their location opened up. It was perfect for my concept, and all I could ever hope for. A big enough roastery, in the same location as the café, visible for guests at all times. Bright, sunny, good location, and: I still knew and many regulars. Coming back to the place where my love and passion for specialty coffee really picked up really is a full circle moment for me.

Community was always important to the way Avéc should operate. Without it, Coffee looses a lot of what makes it special. It's all about people: customers, regulars, producers, collegues, networks, fairs, events. This is what makes coffee such a special industry. This is also where the name Avéc comes from: It means together in french. When I was looking for a name, I wanted to connect it to my french heritage, the focus on community and cooperation, but also evoque a sense of culinary quality that the french are known for. Seeing as our location is also in Haidhausen, the french quarter of munich, it seemed like everything came together nicely, almost meant to be.