r/BuyFromEU • u/DandyLullaby • 4h ago
🔎Looking for alternative Looking for Coffee Roasters
Hello,
I am currently looking for some new coffees, I know only a very very small amount of coffee is produced within Europe and these producers mainly do for own use.
But there are a lot of roasters with a ethical and environmental approach, one that I like is the Swedish Lykke coffee company, but I am looking for similar companies. What is your go to cuppa?
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u/TheHummelman 4h ago
I buy my coffee at Coffeecircle located in Berlin. They offer a subscription with 10% discount. All of their coffees and espresso roasts are bought directly from farmers, they also have some speciality roasts named after the farmers.
I don't know if Coffeecircle delivers EU-wide but i hope they do.
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u/Raggae_Shark26 4h ago
I live in Austria/Vienna, so I can mainly only mention local roasters. But we do have a few good speciality roasters: GOTA, Wildkaffee, Kaffeefabrik, Coffee Pirates, Jonas Reindl Roaster, Echo Roastery (Vorarlberg), Trevo (Vorarlberg)
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u/soloqvuist 4h ago
I have a longstanding subscription with the swedish roaster Koppar. Very small scale and ridiculously enjoyable. When I get my bags of beans they're roasted no more than 3-7 days ago
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u/Suspicious-Cloud404 4h ago
https://mondodelcaffe.de/ Their roastery is in Echternach, Luxembourg, while they have a postal address in Germany, close to the Luxembourgish border.
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u/Mounted_Mare 4h ago
There's loads in the Netherlands, Friedhats probably gets the most people travelling from all over the world to visit them. For more unique and unusual try Shokunin.
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u/DandyLullaby 4h ago
Had some from A.M.O.C but was not really my cup of tea… and expensive 😲
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u/BeWario5 39m ago
Hahah AMOC deals in the specialties in specialty coffee. For some other roasters from the Netherlands check out:
Manhattan
Grounded
Lucifer
DAK
Ripsnorter
Blommers (they do amazing experimental processing!)
Keen
White Label
Lot61
Kolibri
Badeta
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u/mtranda 3h ago
CZ, in order of preference:
- Doubleshot
- Nordbeans
- Mama Coffee
- Candycane
- Pikola
- Dos Mundos
- Kmen
- Datel
RO:
- Sloane
- Mabo
- Origo
- BOB
NL: Man mer brille (since I haven't seen them mentioned)
DE: The Barn, Five Elephant
But honestly, the coffee scene is huge in the EU, with most roasters having direct relationships with the growers.Â
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u/tired-space-weasel 2h ago
IIRC Banyai from Hungary owns the plantations where they get their coffee from. I'm not sure whether you can buy it from abroad though. Their webshop is bybeans.com
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u/Large_Level3506 1h ago
Roasters United is a great network for independent ethical coffee roasters in Europe. All of them are great. Pick one in your country.
Otherwise Flying Roasters from Berlin, also part of the network, ships to all EU countries. And it has organic coffee only, high social standards, a transparency report and most importantly exceptionally good coffee while at the same time being not as expensive as other specialty coffee roasters.
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u/PrincessYemoya 4h ago
Define 'ethical and environmental' approach because depending on who you ask it has different criteria...
In general the 'less' people between the roaster and the producer means less 'big' chains taking a cut of the profit, but this also increases the risk and costs for the producers as they have to manage several smaller contracts with different 'formalities/paperwork' and contractual agreements, so from an economic point of view, for the producers themselves it's often safer/better to work through a local cooperative (work together with several coffee farmers to spread risk (for weather/climate) among more producers and to make use of economies of scale in contract negotiations and transporting fees.
For 'roasters' however, working with a cooperative means the quality and flavor can differ quite substantially which is not beneficial for your 'flavor pattern' and customer happiness as they require some degree of consistency and 'predictability'.. So working with 'bigger' cooperatives with a more stable supply line gives you a bigger advantage.
Also, some cooperatives work in countries where there's still a heavy gender disbalance or where child employment is quite 'present' as the coffee farming business is often a family occupation. Is it more ethical to work with them and make sure the family has enough income to send 1 out of 5 children to school (at least) or is it more ethical to not work with them at all since children should not be working but put into school? There is no clear cut 'ethical' good or wrong in this context I feel so it's a bit weird to claim that one or the other is 'more ethical'.
Transport-wise, there is a few bigger companies that basically have all the monopoly on overseas shipping 'capacity' and even smaller cooperatives/local farms will buy 'slots' on the bill of bigger companies to not have to deal with too much paperwork or have to set up their own 'import/export' lines. The other option (to be more sustainable) is to set-up your own supply line on sailing boats or 'fossilfree' modes of transport, but this is costing a lot of money and is quite risky as well given the temperature for coffeebeans should be rather stable and unforeseen conditions can proof difficult I think. I know of one company that is trying to make this work so yo ucan contact them for sure for more info about this and the coffee brands they are working with: https://fairtransport.eu/en/ This is more 'environmental', on the ethical part I think they work a lot with interns and volunteers to have less costs but one could argue it's a form of exploitation as well...
Also, the 'bigger' shipping companies are facing more and more scrutiny from police and customs as a lot of fresh produce transport is used for drug smuggling as well so for them to 'accept' a new supplier into their portfolio it can be a lengthy process which many small producers can just not afford. So it requires a big upfront investment with quite a high risk.
The other 'environmental' option would be to source from countries that are the closest to where you actually want to do the roasting/selling as the less km's that need to be covered, the less resources/energy is needed to transport them. If you do not want to take the 'sailing option' obviously.
Lastly, the EU is working on legislation to make the 'provenance' of coffee beans etc. more transparent but I think I read somewhere about 80% of 'raw' coffee beans enter through the Antwerp harbor (about 250.000 ton of raw coffee storage capacity), regardless of the B2B client selling them to the local roasteries in the different member states. There is only a limited amount of 'registered' importers so maybe you can contact them and compare which one of those have criteria that align best with your view on the ethical/environmental part...
The chain is long and every part of the chain has different problems/context/solutions and it's impossible to claim one bean you buy at place X is more 'environmentally/ethically friendly' than the 'same bean' you buy at place Y because of the bottle neck thing that are (currently) the monopoly import/export companies.
AI gives me the following list of leads from which you could start if you really want to dive in:
1. De vier grote koffiemagazijniers (warehousing) in Antwerpen
Zij beheren de opslag en logistiek van groene koffie voor importeurs/handelaren. Hun klantenlijsten geven je de importeurs:
- Molenbergnatie — grootste koffiespecialist in de Antwerpse haven (CAG)
- Vollers Belgium — koffielogistiek sinds 1932 (vollers.com)
- Pacorini Antwerp — 155.000 m² magazijnruimte voor koffie (pacorini.be)
- Katoen Natie (expertcafe.be)
2. Concrete importeurs/handelaren in groene koffie (gevestigd in of via Antwerpen)
- Efico (Italiëlei, Antwerpen) — verhandelt ca. 72.000 ton/jaar (GVA)
- Rucquoy — groene-koffie-importeur sinds 1919, Antwerpen (rucquoy.com)
- Greencof — import/export ongebrande koffie, opslag in Antwerpen (greencof.com)
- Douqué — eigen warenhuis in de haven van Antwerpen (koffiegek.nl)
- Nordic Approach — specialty green coffee, warehouse in België (nordicapproach.no)
3. Overzichten en databronnen
- Europages — B2B-directory met 165 leveranciers "rauwe koffiebonen", filterbaar op België (europages.nl)
- CBI (Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries) — marktanalyse met Belgische importeurs en leverancierslanden (Brazilië, Vietnam, Honduras, Oeganda…) (cbi.eu)
- Port of Antwerp-Bruges — voor officiële havenstatistieken en vergunninghouders
- Nationale Bank van België / Statbel —customs-statistieken (HS-code 0901 voor groene koffie)
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u/DandyLullaby 1h ago
That is extensive info, to define, I would rather buy from a roaster who tries at least to source coffee from a plantation they personally know, so they know that it uses for agroforestry for example…
We can try to make an as informed decision as possible of course•
u/PrincessYemoya 1h ago
Of course, but I don't know many roasters who actually visit the plantations and have direct commercial relations with the producers. I know in the cacao industry, the Persoone family is trying to set-up more 'sustainable' but qualitative supply chains for their chocolate lines but it has challenges as well and their chocolate is more in the luxury segment in the end. I imagine coffee is quite a similar product.
Also, I don't think there is a regulation/norm/official registered entity for the term 'agroforestry' so it's very hard to check, let alone know if the methods they use are applied consistently (and not just shown when someone is visiting), and the use of pesticides is really absent... It's similar issues for terms like 'organic', 'sustainable' and whatever other terms the greenwashers like to use :D
Apparently in 2025 EU regulation changed with a big impact on the whole import/export structures, could be worth to look into as well if you really want to get to the bottom of this. I imagine it left a lot of small but qualitative 'producers' out in the cold and in need for a solution to export to EU again! https://efico.com/press-efico/how-the-eus-organic-regulation-update-affects-coffee-value-chains/
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u/iconoclast_mcmxciv 4h ago
I buy most of my coffee at Quijote Kaffee. Afaik not grown in Europe/the EU (I'm not sure this is even possible). The at least offer the coffee farmers fair prices and try to communicate as transparent as possible. I have to say I have not checked whether all of this is true but especially their range of espresso is amazing!
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u/svtslvskl 4h ago
Mad Heads https://madheadscoffee.com/en from Kyiv, Ukraine. Worldwide delivery with same day processing and shipping. They also have sick merch and part of the proceeds goes to the special operations combat unit under Defense Intelligence of Ukraine.
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u/BigHammerSmallSnail 3h ago
We have a shit tonne of roasters in Sweden. Stockholm roast, Johan & Nyström, Drop Coffee I think has their own, Söderbergs bageri. Solde in Malmö are some of the ones I enjoy.
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u/novequattro 1h ago
There's a ton of small roasters around Poland, you can get many of those sent to Europe through coffeedesk.com
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u/DandyLullaby 1h ago
I once found one who is like a 17 y old or something? Don’t know the name anymore, but didn’t ship to my location sadly
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u/Lila-Motor-428 4h ago
Roasted in Vienna: https://www.altwien.at/ or what do you mean by produced? cultivated?
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u/DandyLullaby 4h ago
Yes cultivated :) Mainly looking for roasters, cause there is very limited coffee cultivated in Europe
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u/Weak-Working3972 4h ago
Hm... I like to know more about coffee being cultivated in Europe. I never heard about that. Maybe they do it in some greenhouses. I often buy it from local proclducers when i am in tropical places. In November i am going to Thailand and Laos and i will buy there.