Another day, another acquisition. FairWave Specialty Coffee Collective, the Kansas City-based company backed by private equity firm Great Range Capital, has purchased yet another legacy midwest coffee brand. This time it is Milwaukee’s Fiddleheads Coffee Roasters.
Announced via press release, Fiddleheads joins fellow Milwaukeeans Anodyne Coffee under the FairWave umbrella, which it acquired back in 2023. (Following this acquisition, Fairwave challenged the validity Anodyne’s unanimous vote to unionize, a move that has since been dismissed by the National Labor Relations Board). With nearly three decades as a family-owned business, Fiddleheads grew to eight locations around the greater Milwaukee area, their first opening in 1996. But things change and 30 years is like 100 years in coffee shops terms, and so co-owners Mike Wroblewski and Ray Marcy began considering life after Fiddleheads.
“Fiddleheads is our family’s baby,” Marcy says in the press release. “It was really important to us that if we ever did decide to sell, it would be to someone who works in coffee—someone who understands how special Fiddleheads is to us, and how special it has become to the local community here.”
Fiddleheads becomes the 12th brand acquired by FairWave, who most recently made waves in acquiring North Carolina’s Black & White Coffee and before that with the purchase of Baltimore’s Ceremony Coffee. They join other brands like Spyhouse, Messenger Coffee, Hugo Tea, and Up Coffee among the ranks of the FairWavedly acquired.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
