From Chicago Kitchens to Coffee

Coffee × Hospitality × Food

Evan DeVries is the founder of Common Friends Coffee and a longtime Chicago hospitality and specialty-coffee professional. Common Friends grew out of a career spent thinking about flavor, service, consistency, and the way food and drink bring people together.

Kitchens First

Evan first started cooking at Giovanni’s in Munster, Indiana, before attending Kendall College, where he graduated from the Culinary Arts program in 2006. His Chicago restaurant experience included line cook and pastry work at Everest with Jean Joho, cooking at Boka with Giuseppe Tentori, Green Zebra, and serving as sous chef at Old Town Brasserie. He also spent time cooking through Spain and France.

Hospitality, Bars & Coffee

His career expanded beyond kitchens into bars, cafés, and specialty coffee. Evan spent 15 years in specialty coffee, developing experience across coffee, café operations, training, and hospitality. He trained with Hiroshi Sawada in connection with Sawada Coffee and served as the first coffee trainer for Hogsalt Hospitality. His hospitality work also included running the bar at Au Cheval for several years and working at The Violet Hour.

Why Common Friends

Common Friends sits at the intersection of coffee, hospitality, and food. The idea is simple: take the care of a great kitchen, the generosity of a great restaurant, and the craft of specialty coffee—and make all of it feel approachable.

That philosophy shapes how we roast, how we train, how we support wholesale partners, and how we write our Coffee Guides. The goal is not to make coffee feel more complicated. It is to help people make, serve, and enjoy it better.

We’re brewing something special, together.