Belfast coffee guide: from a market cart to a roasting city

Philip Gallagher started serving coffee from a cart in a city-centre arcade in 1998, inspired by the coffee culture of Seattle. By 2001 his business was micro-roasting at St George’s Market, and today it is Drop Hopper Coffee Roasters. Most of the rest came from 2013: Established in the Cathedral Quarter, General Merchants in Stranmillis, Kaffe O in the Ormeau area, the Root & Branch micro-roastery in 2016, and a younger set of cafés and roasters, some serving Belfast roasts and others coffee from Galway, Copenhagen, London and across Europe.

Drop Hopper Coffee Roasters, St George’s Market

Drop Hopper grew out of Javaman Coffee, the cart Philip Gallagher opened in a city-centre arcade in 1998. A mobile van imported from Italy followed in 2001, along with a shop at St George’s Market, where Javaman began micro-roasting beans daily; the stall won Best Stall at the market in 2013. Philip founded Drop Hopper Coffee Roasters in 2018 with a roaster for small-batch coffee, and retail beans followed a year later. The coffee bar and store at the market has seating and a shelf of beans and brewing gear, and the original market cart still trades. The house coffees are sold only in store.

Established Coffee, the Cathedral Quarter

Established opened in the Cathedral Quarter in December 2013. Mark and Bridgeen set out to build a café around great service, great coffee and great food, and at the start, a lot of people gave it six months because “Belfast wasn’t ready for it”. It now roasts its own coffee at a roastery in Sailortown, where it also runs brewing and espresso classes for up to five people. The café is walk-ins only, and the Established Kitchen menu changes regularly, from eggs on sourdough and house-made granola to a breakfast bap with Guinness mustard aioli.

General Merchants, Stranmillis and across the city

General Merchants is “your local neighbourhood eaterie, supplying fine coffee & Antipodean brunches”. It began in Stranmillis in 2013, in a café locals knew simply as 5A, and now has four cafés and a city-centre kiosk. The East Belfast café occupies the old Cabin Hill Grocery Store; the North Belfast café sits under Cave Hill and puts Vegemite on its Melbourne Breakfast; the Ormeau café is licensed and serves brunch all day. The coffee comes from its local roasting partner, The Roast Works, and is roasted in Belfast.

Kaffe O, Belfast by way of Copenhagen

“Inspired by Copenhagen. Made in Belfast.” Kaffe O began with Orla, a corporate lawyer on secondment to Copenhagen who spent her evenings and weekends cycling between the city’s coffee bars. She opened the first Kaffe O in the Ormeau area in 2014; there are now seven, including two coffee hatches in the city centre. It is a pure espresso bar, with a double shot in every drink and no latte art. The house blend of Costa Rica, Guatemala and Ethiopia is hand roasted in Copenhagen by Ricco Sørenson of Riccos and is never more than three weeks from roast, and the food, from hot rye Brøds to always-vegan soups, comes from its own kitchen.

Root & Branch Coffee, East Belfast

Root & Branch opened in 2016 on a Belfast back street, in a space only big enough for a roaster and a coffee bar, as “Belfast’s first specialty micro-roastery”. Its line is “Really Good Coffee. Roasted in Belfast.” The roastery and brew bar are now at Portview Trade Centre in East Belfast, with the current coffees on as filter and espresso and bags to take home. Simon, the company director, set it up after a year of research into specialty coffee; Prin, the head roaster, came to coffee as a barista in Chiang Mai.

Trait, the city centre and Comber

Trait opened its first coffee shop in Comber, County Down, in November 2017, and now has cafés across Belfast, a horsebox and a flagship in the city centre. The flagship houses the bakery that supplies every shop, moved there in 2025, and several evenings a week it becomes Trait Late, a wine bar with house-made breads and natural wines. The coffee comes from roasters around the world, and Square Mile beans from London are on sale in every Trait.

Neighbourhood, the Cathedral Quarter

Friends Oisin McEvoy and Ryan Crown founded Neighbourhood in 2021, opposite St Anne’s Cathedral. A fire forced it out in 2022, and after a spell in a smaller unit nearby it moved in 2025 into the former Church of Ireland House next to the cathedral. The coffee is from Calendar Coffee in Galway, on espresso and on batch and hand-brewed filter, and it is the “Home of the Piccolo Split”. The brunch runs from Turkish eggs to breakfast tacos, walk-ins only, and in 2024 it opened a second café in Austin, Texas.

Lucid Coffee Roasters

Stephen Houston founded Lucid in 2021 after years of competing and judging; he won the Irish Brewers Cup in 2017 and 2019 and placed second in the UK SCA Roasting Championships in 2023. Lucid means clearly expressed and easy to understand, and each coffee is sold with its producer, its importer, the price paid for the green coffee and, when the producer agrees, the farmgate and FOB prices. Lucid buys coffees scoring below 85 or 86 points as readily as higher-scoring lots, since they are usually a larger share of a farmer’s production, and commits to a yearly transparency report.

Cultura, East Belfast

Cultura is a neighbourhood café in East Belfast under the line “Elevating the everyday”. Each month the team tastes coffees from roasters and producers, and the best lots go on the bar. The same selection goes out as Curated, a monthly subscription of coffees from roasters across Europe, with recipes for each. It has run The Art of Brewing courses for home brewers and Omakase evenings, four-course coffee tastings for 24 guests built on the format of the World Barista and World Brewers Cup championships.

Bailies Coffee Roasters

Bailies roasts in Belfast on Probat equipment, building a profile for each coffee in its own coffee lab. Its partnership with Comepcafé, a farmer-led cooperative in Cauca, Colombia, began in 2015, when Jan Komarek, the green bean buyer, first travelled there; the cooperative has since sent Bailies more than 26 containers. The roastery is also a training campus accredited by the Specialty Coffee Association, with courses from a three-hour home espresso workshop to the SCA Barista Skills Foundation.

What you need to know about Belfast specialty coffee

Which Belfast cafés roast their own coffee? Established roasts in Sailortown, Root & Branch at its brew bar in East Belfast and Drop Hopper for its counters at St George’s Market. Bailies and Lucid are roasters; Bailies hosts its courses at the roastery.

Which roasters do the other cafés serve? Neighbourhood pours Calendar Coffee from Galway, Kaffe O a house blend roasted in Copenhagen, General Merchants coffee from The Roast Works in Belfast, and Trait sells Square Mile beans from London. Cultura pours espresso from Special Guests in Belfast, and its subscription rotates roasters from across Europe.

Where is the coffee in the Cathedral Quarter? Established and Neighbourhood are both in the Cathedral Quarter.

Where can you learn to brew? Established runs home brewing and espresso classes at its Sailortown roastery, Bailies runs SCA courses at its training campus, and Cultura has run The Art of Brewing for home brewers.

Where is the brunch? General Merchants is built around Antipodean brunches, Neighbourhood and Established both run kitchens, and Kaffe O makes its food in its own kitchen.