Cafés Méo

Cafés Méo traces back to 1928, when brothers Jules and Emile Meauxsoone opened a combined grocery and coffee shop on rue Saint-André in Lille — the kind of dual grocer-roaster storefront common to French towns of the period, but one this family kept running and expanded rather than letting fold into a larger chain. The company later moved its headquarters to quai de l'Ouest in the Lille metropolitan area, a move that took it from single shopfront to a proper roasting operation.

What sets the history apart is timing: Cafés Méo was an early adopter of direct coffee importation, buying green beans directly rather than through the intermediary trading houses most French roasters of that era relied on — a sourcing choice that predates the direct-trade language specialty coffee uses today by decades. The company still roasts under its own name, producing whole beans, ground coffee and capsules rather than outsourcing production to a co-packer.

Nearly a century on from two brothers' grocery shop, the throughline is family ownership and a roasting operation still run in-house, not the more common path of a founding-era roaster being absorbed into a larger group.