About us

Welcome to Treasure Coast Coffee Company.

In the summer of 1715, eleven Spanish galleons slipped out of Havana harbor heavy with the wealth of the Americas: chests of gold doubloons, silver bars, emeralds the size of plums, and the kind of cargo that made kings lose sleep. The fleet was bound for Cádiz under the command of Captain-General Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla. They never made it.

A hurricane of legendary fury struck on July 30th. One by one the ships were driven onto the jagged reefs that lie just offshore from what we now call Florida’s Treasure Coast, the stretch of Atlantic shoreline from Sebastian Inlet down through Vero Beach, Fort Pierce, and Stuart. Eleven vessels sank in a single night. More than a thousand souls were lost. The sea claimed its prize, and for nearly three centuries the wrecks lay scattered across the ocean floor like a broken necklace.

Beachcombers and professional salvagers still find pieces of that fortune today, a gold coin here, a cannonball there, which is why the coastline earned its name. The Treasure Coast isn’t marketing poetry. Its history written in sand and saltwater.

But every legend worth its salt has a second, quieter chapter.

According to a story passed down through generations of local fishermen (and enthusiastically embellished by every subsequent generation), one of those galleons carried something far more volatile than gold. Tucked inside a small, iron-bound chest in the captain’s cabin was a modest quantity of the rarest coffee beans then known in the Spanish empire, beans smuggled out of the highland plantations of the New World because their aroma was said to be worth more than their weight in silver to anyone with a discerning palate and a long voyage ahead.

When the storm shattered the hull, the chest burst open. The beans, being lighter and rather more buoyant than the surrounding treasure, rode the waves instead of sinking. They washed ashore in drifts along the very beaches where the gold lay buried. Local settlers, mistaking the strange oval seeds for some exotic New World spice, planted a few. The rest, they brewed.

Or so the story goes.

We like to repeat it with a perfectly straight face while pouring a fresh cup. It sounds almost plausible, right up until you remember that coffee had only just begun its slow conquest of Europe and the idea of a Spanish captain treating it like contraband is the sort of delightful historical fiction that improves with every retelling. (We have it on excellent authority from a retired salvage diver who may or may not have been enjoying our 1715 Shipwreck Dark Roast at the time that the beans were, in fact, “absolutely there.” His wink was convincing.)

The truth, as it so often does, is simpler and better.

We are a small, passionate provider of coffees and teas located right here on the Treasure Coast, the same coast that has spent three hundred years guarding its secrets. We source exceptional single-origin Arabica beans from the world’s finest growing regions, roast them in small batches with the same care once reserved for royal cargo, and create blends that celebrate both our maritime heritage and the quiet ritual of a perfect morning cup.

From the bright, citrus-laced Vero Beach Valencia to the bold, chocolate-deep 1715 Shipwreck Dark Roast, every bag carries a little piece of the adventure that still defines this coastline. We don’t claim our coffee was aboard a sinking galleon. We simply believe that the spirit of discovery, that restless hunt for something rare and wonderful, never really left these shores.

It just traded doubloons for coffee beans.

And honestly? We think the exchange was a fair one.

Come aboard. The water’s warm, the beans are fresh, and the treasure is already in the cup.

Enjoy!

The Crew at Treasure Coast Coffee Company

Vero Beach, Florida