Sean Wisedale Brews Coffee at Its Peak

It’s a typical morning at Tribe Coffee Roastery and Espresso Bar on 12th Street, just west of Old Dixie Highway. Bright chatter and easy laughter, punctuated by the rhythmic hiss of steam and the velvety aroma of coffee, fill the air. People on their way to work, parents with toddlers in tow, surfers, gymgoers, and retirees pour in as fast as the freshly brewed cups are poured out. Some find a cozy spot to sit and relax. Others huddle over laptops or enjoy quality time with friends at outdoor tables.

“It’s all about community, and coffee is the bonding medium,” says owner Sean Wisedale, who opened Tribe in 2023 after crossing the Atlantic from South Africa with his wife, Katherine, and their two children, Sarah and Robert, in the family’s 38-foot catamaran.

As if that’s not adventurous enough, Wisedale—a filmmaker-turned-mountaineer
—holds the distinction of being the first person from Africa to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each of the earth’s continents.

What makes a mountaineer trade his crampons for cupping spoons? “Life, adventure, and a bit of stubborn curiosity,” reflects Wisedale, who grew up in South Africa and earned degrees in television production and business management. While chronicling adventurous expeditions for the National Geographic and Discovery networks, as well as his own documentary productions, he developed a passion for mountaineering.

Wisedale reached the summit of Mount Everest—the world’s highest peak at 29,032 feet—on May 30, 2003. For two months, his team had battled some of the mountain’s worst weather in decades, almost admitting defeat, until a last-minute decision to take advantage of a late window of favorable weather paid off.

By February 2004, Wisedale had scaled the highest mountain on each continent, and he was in high demand as an expedition leader. “The Seven Summits is like getting a gold medal in the Olympics,” he points out. “At the time, only 74 people in history had done it, and there was a bit of a race to see who would be the first South African.”

That accomplishment and years of mountaineering experience earned Wisedale added credibility as a go-to guide for others attempting to scale various mountains around the world. “Knowing the routes, understanding the elements of putting an expedition together, understanding weather … you become a risk management expert, and people entrusted me with their lives,” says the mountaineer, who has reached 77 summits, including Mount Kilimanjaro 34 times. He documented those expeditions in a series of eight one-hour documentaries and a book titled Freeze Frame. 

“Leading a group of 10 clients to the summit of Kilimanjaro, for example, requires approximately 70 porters to assist with food, water, toilets, tents, and supplies,” Wisedale explains. “The way to get up the mountain is to eat your way up, keep your hemoglobin production high, and that involves keeping your energy levels very high. We eat three-course meals, three times a day.”

With Katherine’s help, the Wisedales’ adventure touring business thrived from 2004 until 2020 when the COVID pandemic halted travel. By then, however, Sean had become an expert on another topic: coffee. During his climbs, he spent a lot of time on coffee plantations located 15 degrees north and south of the equator at the base of some of the world’s tallest mountains.

He met growers, including the owners of Tribeca Coffee, one of the biggest roasteries in South Africa, who hired him to collect data on climate change, glacial melting, and their impact on coffee production. Soon, he became very knowledgeable about the growing, harvesting, and roasting of coffee. “The agriculture, harvesting, and extraction of coffee is a science,” he says. “We hugely value education, and I’ve made a point of studying coffee.”

With COVID in full swing, Sean, Katherine, Sarah, and Robert—then 9 and 4, respectively—packed up their catamaran African Dream and crossed the Atlantic. The two-year adventure included stops in Saint Helena, Ascension Island, Brazil, Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, and ultimately Palm Beach. Katherine acknowledges that homeschooling the children while at sea was challenging, even in the best of times. “I said to Sean, the first thing I’m going to do when we land is find and hug a teacher and never let go. They’re the most amazing people!”

When hurricane season rolled around in 2022, the Wisedales put their boat in storage and returned to South Africa to formulate a plan for opening a subsidiary of Tribeca Coffee in Florida. After returning to the United States, they sailed from West Palm Beach to Vero Beach to pick up some boat parts from a friend. While anchored off Memorial Island, they became acquainted with Vero Beach, took the GoLine into town, and liked what they saw.

“The kids played in Riverside Park, and soon we learned that Vero Beach is the best-kept secret as a hurricane refuge. Equidistant from the Fort Pierce and Sebastian inlets, there is little risk of storm surge, and the deep channels are an ideal place to tie up boats during a hurricane,” points out Sean. After sitting out Milton and Nicole in the mangroves here, the Wisedales purchased a home in the Rockridge area, enrolled their children in public school—much to Katherine’s delight—and opened Tribe Coffee in 2023.

Since then, the Wisedales have forged many savory relationships within and beyond the community they now call home. They have set up warehousing for the distribution of green coffee beans they import from Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Bali, Mexico, and Ethiopia.

“We’re growing this company in Vero Beach to become a market leader in specialty coffee,” says Sean. “I would like to import all the top green bean coffees that are available in the world, and from this point here, distribute green bean coffee throughout Florida. The interesting thing is when I was initially thinking about where we would locate this business, if it were to happen, it needed to be at a strategic junction between Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa. Here, we are on the apex of the T-junction for all three—the main centers for coffee.”

The roastery provides fresh-roasted beans and ground coffee to specialty coffee outlets, restaurants, churches, schools, and markets throughout Vero Beach and across Florida. “The roastery element is obviously important for us because we love coffee,” says Sean. 

When asked what makes Tribe Coffee superior to others in its class, he is quick to point out that it is the air-roasting technology he uses—something he claims no other Florida coffee roaster has. The process uses rapidly moving hot air to heat, lift, and circulate the 100 percent Arabica coffee seeds, much like an air popcorn popper.

At 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the outer shell of the seed pops off like a popcorn kernel. That’s known as the first crack. The bitter shells are removed from the roast, resulting in coffee that is naturally sweeter, lighter, brighter, and more aromatic. Beans are packaged without artificial additives or chemical flavoring and sold within days of roasting to guarantee freshness. When purchasing coffee, Sean advises consumers to check the roast dates on the packaging. “If you’re drinking coffee that’s older than 12 weeks, it’s stale.” 

As an extension of Tribe, the Wisedales have a mobile coffee trailer with an espresso machine that they set up at community events, such as their children’s Vero Beach Rowing club regattas. They also run coffee catamaran tours aboard their power catamaran Pandora to the Bahamas, Florida Keys, and through the mangroves of Vero Beach.

A frequent guest lecturer at local schools and community groups, Sean satisfies his innate passion for climbing by leading an occasional expedition up a mountain. In a recent blog post, summing up his current climb to the peak of the coffee business, he writes, “I still miss the sound of wind over ice. Snow falling on my tent. But now, I hear the crack of first roast, the hiss of the steam wand, and the laughter of people drinking something that started on a mountain, just like me.”