Sumo Coffee Roasters was founded in summer 2020 by Daniel Horbat and his partner Alexandra. Daniel started working with coffee to pay the bills after university, and the couple moved to Dublin in 2012, where an Ethiopian coffee introduced them to specialty coffee. He is a three-time Irish Cup Tasters Champion, in 2016, 2018 and 2019, and in 2019 he won the World Cup Tasters Championship in Berlin with a perfect score, the first Irish representative to take the title. Alexandra runs the packing, the relationships and the business side, and placed third at the Irish Cup Tasters nationals in 2024.

The roasting began at home during lockdown on a 50 g Ikawa sample roaster, which turned out more than 300 kg before it gave out, because the first production roaster was stuck in transit. A 3 kg Mill City followed, and today Sumo roasts on a custom-made Probat P12 III. The coffee is roasted to order twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the range is split into filter and espresso roasts, with competition lots such as the Finca Deborah geshas from Panama. Sumo aims to trade directly and pay farmers a fair price, and to tell the story behind each coffee from the producer to the barista.

The name goes back to Daniel’s childhood in Romania, when the arrival of a colour television introduced him to sumo wrestling and to Akebono, the first wrestler born outside Japan to reach the rank of yokozuna. He kept to a sumo-like regime of plain food and no alcohol for six months before the 2019 championship.

Sumo also has a café in Temple Bar.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Sumo Coffee Roasters