Kaffa Roast­ery is the first inde­pen­dent cof­fee roast­ery in Helsinki. Located in the Punavuori area just next to the har­bor, Kaffa Roast­ery also runs an invit­ing café where cus­tomers can watch the roast­ing process while sam­pling cups from their excel­lent in-house blend selec­tion. On one hot summer’s day we sat down to have a word with the co-founder of the com­pany, Svante Kampf.

Mash­mar­ket: What’s the story behind Kaffa Roastery?

Svante Kampf: Before we got started the com­pany, the two of us, co-founder Ben­jamin And­berg and myself, we were real food and wine enthu­si­asts, per­fec­tion­ist snobs you could even say. At some point we real­ized that we could broaden the scope of our enthu­si­asm into cof­fee which still is gas­tro­nom­i­cally a rather unex­plored ter­ri­tory in Fin­land, espe­cially when com­pared to the insane vol­ume of its con­sump­tion here.

From the very begin­ning we knew that we wanted to do some­thing against the big brands in the cof­fee indus­try. Our core con­cept is to con­cen­trate on the ori­gin of the cof­fee and the con­di­tions as well as the pay­checks of the farm­ers instead of mak­ing the most prof­its our­selves with less-quality, unjust prod­ucts. We are also will­ing to pay a higher whole­sale price for the cof­fee breeds that we have in our selec­tion in order to main­tain bet­ter qual­ity and to secure fair con­di­tions for the farm­ers. Next to that, the brew­ing process that we do com­pletely single-handedly here in our own roast­ery, is also impor­tant for us. It’s the DIY, hand­crafted process of roast­ing the beans that makes the difference.

MM: How do you dis­tin­guish your­selves apart from the big cor­po­rate cof­fee brands out there?

SK: We are buy­ing in smaller quan­ti­ties through pri­vate agen­cies that fre­quently visit the cul­ti­va­tion farms and share the infor­ma­tion about the cul­ti­vated breeds to a group of smaller buy­ers like us around the world. Even­tu­ally, our goal is to buy straight from the farm­ers, but the logis­tics with that is chal­leng­ing with such a small scale com­pany as we are. Although the ori­gin of the cof­fee is the first and fore­most impor­tant thing to us, nat­u­rally our own roast­ing meth­ods and mix­tures of dif­fer­ent breeds together are cru­cial in mak­ing us stand out from the estab­lished big brands. We try to keep the mix­tures as sim­ple as pos­si­ble so that the char­ac­ter­is­tics of each of the used breeds still pop out recognizable.

MM: In your web­site you say that every cof­fee breed has its own story. Can you enlighten this a bit and give us some examples?

SK: Yes, our cof­fees come from every cor­ner of the world. They all have their own pecu­liar­i­ties and fea­tures that make them unique. From the seeds of the cof­fee plants to the com­po­si­tion of the soil and cli­mate of the cul­ti­va­tion region and finally to the roast­ing process attuned to each breed and mix, every phase adds up to the final prod­uct. Not for­get­ting the roast­ing, we usu­ally aim to high­light the sto­ries of the cof­fees with inter­est­ing and unex­pected things that took place before they ended up in our hands.

Let’s take this one Indian blend from our selec­tion with a very dark and round taste. The beans of this cof­fee are dried out­doors dur­ing the mon­soon winds, which blow over the beans dur­ing a period of 2–3 months. The winds make the acid­ity of the beans drop and the taste exclu­sively recognizable.

MM: How do you see so called the cof­fee cul­ture in Fin­land and your own posi­tion in it?

SK:  The exist­ing cor­po­rate brands have estab­lished their sta­tus pretty firmly and in our opin­ion that needs to be shaken. Nat­u­rally there’s a clash between our own per­fec­tion­ist atti­tude of mak­ing the unique qual­ity prod­uct ver­sus the entrenched drink­ing habits that stem from decades back. The essen­tial thing is that the cus­tomers have enough knowl­edge and guts to demand alter­na­tives to the sta­tus quo.

One good exam­ple of mak­ing a dif­fer­ence is our monthly events like pub­lic tast­ings where atten­dants have the oppor­tu­nity to get to know the ori­gins of each cof­fee and the steps of the roast­ing process, the whole pack­age so to speak. In most cases it’s still the actual tast­ing of prod­ucts in the end (the cup­ping table) that really opens the eyes and encour­ages to invest in and enjoy bet­ter coffee.

MM: How does your future look like?

SK: Well, as said ear­lier we hope to tackle the chal­lenge of import­ing the par­tic­u­lar breeds that we are want to use in our roast­ery with­out the help of any mid­dle­men. Fur­ther­more, we’re aim­ing to be more acces­si­ble and attrac­tive to new cus­tomers. After all this is not a secre­tive con­nois­seur sport but a fair alter­na­tive to your reg­u­lar morn­ing cup. Besides our roast­ery slash cafe, you can also find our prod­ucts in selected cafes and stores around the country.

MM: Any final words?

SK: All the peo­ple out there, please have the courage to demand bet­ter cof­fee! Trust me, it’s worth it!

www.kaffaroastery.fi

All images by Kaffa Roastery.