WAY is a Ghent coffee roaster started in 2017 by Charlene De Buysere. She trained as an interior designer, learned coffee at OR Coffee in Ghent and became Belgian AeroPress champion in 2011, Belgian Barista and Brewers Cup champion, and World AeroPress Champion in Portland in 2012. After a year of pop-ups she opened WAY at Dok Noord, and she designed every WAY interior herself. Ward De Corte runs the roastery and buys the green coffee.

Everything in the WAY bars and the bakery is plant-based. The roasting team roasts in small batches every week at Dok Noord, the flagship, where the espresso bar looks onto the roaster in a former industrial site on the edge of the city and the workshops on espresso, latte art, pour-over, AeroPress and tasting take place. In 2021 WAY opened its bakery at Keizerpoort, by the Franse Vaart, and since November 2024 it has baked sourdough there too. The shop in the centre sells the full range of beans, ground to order, with coffee to take away and a bookshop of coffee, plant-based cookery and art books upstairs. Jakobijn, the most central bar, has a terrace and joined WAY in 2022.

Each bag carries four symbols designed by Charlene, for sweet, fruity, acidity and spicy, filled in more fully the stronger each comes through; she also wrote the book De smaak van specialty koffie. Most coffees are roasted separately for espresso and for filter, and Brazil Bota Fora, a pulped natural Yellow Bourbon, is the house espresso in the bars. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: WAY Specialty Coffee Roasters