The owner of Sanwa Coffee Works is Nishikawa Takashi (西川隆士). Originally, Nishikawa-san's grandfather started a traditional Japanese kissaten (喫茶店, Traditional Japanese Cafe) called Sanwa Kissa (三和喫茶) that catered to the Tenma Market in the area. Restaurant staff in Osaka would come by in the morning to stock up on ingredients, and so Sanwa Kissa would open earlier in the morning to cater to these customers as well as those who worked in the market itself.
Since its founding, the Sanwa Kissa has been blessed by many regulars who visit it as part of their daily routine. To their grandfather, the idea of Sanwa Kissa was to be a place where regulars would eat breakfast, go to work, come for a break, and have a cup of coffee. Then they would go back to work, and after work, come by again, and the cafe would be there to thank them for their hard work that day. Nishikawa-san's parents met each other in the coffee shop, before they eventually got married. They continued on the work of the owner's grandfather and continue to run the traditional kissaten until around 2014. Nishikawa-san himself often helped out in the kissaten after school as he grew up.
Rather than simply taking over the kissaten, Nishikawa-san decided to start out his own shop. He started out by selling coffee beans online, and business was rough at the start as a complete novice to the F&B scene. Eventually, after much trial and error, business online began to pick up, and then Sanwa Coffee Shop was started as a physical shop that mainly sold coffee beans. It was located just 3 minutes away from Sanwa Kissaten.
Around the end of 2014, Nishikawa-san's parents retired and shut down Sanwa Kissa. In order to carry on the legacy of Sanwa Kissa, Sanwa Coffee Shop was renamed to Sanwa Coffee Works and became a full-fledged cafe. Furthermore, a second branch was opened in Umeda Station in a much more central and larger location than the main shop in Tenma.
