Choosing Coffee for Your Coffee Shop – Where Do You Start?

cupping coffees

Choosing Coffee for Your Coffee Shop

Choosing coffee for your coffee shop can be surprisingly difficult.

There are thousands of coffees available.

Different origins.

Different varieties.

Different processing methods.

Different roast styles.

Different blends.

And every roaster will tell you that their coffee is fantastic.

So where do you start?

Start with your customer.

What do you want the coffee to taste like?

Do you want something chocolatey and familiar?

Something bright and fruity?

Something somewhere in the middle?

There is no universally correct answer.

The coffee should fit your concept and your customers.

If your coffee shop serves a lot of milk-based drinks, you may want an espresso that has enough sweetness and body to work well with milk.

If you're building a filter coffee menu, you may want coffees that show more distinctive flavours.

And you might want both.

Blend or single origin?

A blend can give you consistency and a flavour profile designed specifically for espresso.

A single origin allows you to showcase a particular country, farm, region or processing style.

Again, there isn't a winner.

Many coffee shops use a blend as their main espresso and offer one or more single origins alongside it.

This can give customers something familiar as well as something interesting to explore.

Taste it with milk

This is particularly important if you're running a coffee shop.

Don't only taste your espresso by itself.

Taste it as a cappuccino.

Taste it as a flat white.

Taste it with the amount of milk your customers are actually going to receive.

A coffee can taste wonderful as an espresso and behave completely differently once milk enters the picture.

Think about consistency

Your coffee needs to taste good on Monday morning.

And Tuesday afternoon.

And Saturday when the shop is completely packed.

That means your supplier isn't simply supplying bags of beans.

They are part of your consistency.

You need reliable deliveries, clear communication and someone who can help when things aren't going according to plan.

Because sooner or later, they won't.

Coffee is agricultural.

Roasting changes with different coffees.

Equipment changes.

Weather changes.

Staff change.

The ability to adapt is part of running a coffee shop.

Don't choose coffee just because it sounds impressive

“Panama Gesha, anaerobic natural, 2,000 metres.”

It certainly sounds interesting.

But that doesn't automatically make it the right coffee for your coffee shop.

The most important question isn't:

“Is this coffee impressive?”

It's:

“Does this coffee work for us?”

That's a much more useful question.

— Henning  Al-Gharb Coffee Roasters, Algarve

☕ Want to make better coffee at home?

Join The Friday Filter. One useful coffee tip every Friday from the Al-Gharb Coffee Roasters. Brewing advice, coffee experiments, things we've learned from roasting—and occasionally things we've learned by getting it completely wrong.

No coffee snobbery. Just better coffee.