Heist Hopes Its Decaf Can Steal a Share of the High-End Coffee Category

A new coffee brand called Heist launched online last month with a lineup focused entirely on decaf and low-caf coffees. Alongside direct-to-consumer sales, Heist is pursuing wholesale accounts with high-end bars and restaurants, particularly those serving customers later in the day.

“Bars and fine dining own the part of the day we care about. That is where coffee after 8 p.m. is already a considered choice, where the guest is paying attention, and where the person building the menu has the standing to make it credible,” Heist Co-Founder Stephen Bruner told Daily Coffee News. “If a beverage director at a World’s 50 Best bar puts our decaf on the menu, that says something a shelf placement can’t.”

Heist is building its decaf lineup by selecting caffeinated green coffees for quality and flavor before evaluating how well they perform through decaffeination.

“Our focus, and differentiator, is building the majority of our coffee program around coffees we select,” Bruner said. “This allows us to start with a higher level of coffee quality than what is typically chosen for decaffeination.”

Bruner, a co-founder of the drinkware company Corkcircle, founded the coffee-focused venture with his wife, Sarah Bruner. Heist coffees feature only water-process decaffeination through multiple suppliers, Bruner said. 

Heist Director of Coffee Jarrett Johnson, a friend of the Bruners and founder of Orlando, Florida-based Lineage Coffee Roasting, selects, buys and develops roast profiles for Heist coffees. Production takes place on Diedrich and Joper roasters at the Lineage facility.

Bruner hopes the resulting coffees can move decaf from a menu afterthought to a more deliberate choice. “We’re not trying to win a shelf slot,” Bruner said. “We’re trying to establish an occasion.”

Heist joins a growing number of specialty coffee brands focused on decaf and reduced-caffeine options. Brooklyn-based Explorer Cold Brew acquired Savorista earlier this year, while 2025 brought the launches of Massachusetts-based Dekaf, Frequent Coffee in San Diego and Australia-based Caffeine Control, led by 2013 World Barista Champion Pete Licata.

Bruner and Johnson have been friends for about a decade, regularly spending time together with their families. Bruner said his interest in building a quality-decaf-focused company predates the category’s recent momentum.

“I had 15-plus years of date nights with my wife that ended in bad decafs at restaurants, and during a health journey that included cutting off caffeine in the morning, I struggled to find anything as good as the caffeinated alternatives,” Bruner said. “The pursuit of this really started with a question: Why is it not as good?”

Prior to launching sales, a Pink Bourbon coffee from Huila, Colombia, roasted by Heist earned a score of 93 from Coffee Review, one of the highest scores ever given to a decaf by the longstanding review site. Bruner said he expects another coffee dropping later this year to “shatter the ceiling for decaf” in terms of cupping scores.

“We hope to keep disrupting old assumptions and surprising some of the elite insiders we respect,” Bruner said.

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