The seven places in this guide are spread across Kraków, from Kazimierz and Kleparz to Borek Fałęcki in the south and Nowa Huta in the east. Five of them roast their own coffee: Karma in Piasek and Kazimierz, Pale at Public Order in Krowodrza, Coffee Rain in Borek Fałęcki, String Taste in a Kazimierz guitar shop and Kelleran inside a fort north of the Old Town. Szklarnia in Kleparz pours a house filter roasted by Pale, and its sister Zgoda Café in Nowa Huta brings guest roasters to its big table.
Karma, Piasek and Kazimierz
Karma began as a café, and for its first two years it served coffee from Union Hand-Roasted in London. With Union’s help the team kept improving, and buying a roaster of its own followed: Karma wanted to learn, to grow and to be independent. Karma looks for coffees with fruity profiles, “bez nudy”, without boredom, and buys green coffee through Nordic Approach in Oslo and Trabocca in Amsterdam, paying attention to freshness and season. The roastery is in Kazimierz, where Karma also runs training sessions and cuppings for the cafés it supplies and for home brewers. At the café in Piasek, west of the Old Town, the coffee comes with food made on site: cakes, including gluten-free and vegan ones, tarts, soups, a lunch menu that changes every day and bread from Karma’s own oven.
Pale and Public Order, Krowodrza
Pale is a Kraków roastery headquartered at Public Order, a café in Krowodrza. It also designs custom coffee solutions for roasters and brewers and connects businesses to the global coffee supply chain, with the aim of moving Polish coffee forward “through design, technology, creativity and grace”. Katarzyna Rachwał and Blair Gillespie-Smith are its directors, and Maciej Smoleń is head roaster. Pale roasts to order on Mondays and Thursdays and sells its coffee in three lines: Pale Filter, Pale Mini for batch brew and everyday filter, and Pale Espresso. Its merchants run from cafés across Poland, Szklarnia among them, to bars in Europe, Japan and the United States.
Coffee Rain, Borek Fałęcki
Coffee Rain is a roastery and café in Borek Fałęcki, in the south of the city, and it works only with coffee from Guatemala. It buys directly from family farms there, among them La Soledad in Acatenango, which has belonged to the Pérez family for five generations, and San Gerardo in the Amatitlán region. Every lot scores at least 80 SCA points, and roasting happens every Monday in small batches. The shelf splits into filter coffees from single farms and espressos, plus the official coffee of the local club KS Borek. Its motto is “Im prościej, tym lepiej”, the simpler, the better.
String Taste, Kazimierz
String Taste is a café and boutique guitar shop in Kazimierz, founded in 2022 so that a guitarist would not have to choose between a great cup of coffee and time spent around beautiful instruments. Since 2026 it has roasted its espresso itself as Tens Coffee Roasters, where Steph and Adrian roast every batch and lean towards lighter roasts. Three espressos are always on the grinders, from a sweet, rounded classic to a rotating special lot, and every coffee scores at least 82 SCA points. Filter comes from guest roasters, DAK, Morgon, Ineffable, Liquid Dream and Nomad, brewed to order on Origami, Pulsar and Cerapotta drippers or in a Chemex for two, and their bags are on sale. At weekends the kitchen serves vegetarian breakfasts rooted in Latin American cooking, from empanadas to huevos rancheros, and the shop co-organises Poland Guitar Fest, a boutique guitar expo held every year in Kraków.
Palarnia Kawy Kelleran, Fort Luneta Warszawska
Palarnia Kawy Kelleran roasts inside Fort Luneta Warszawska, north of the Old Town, where it also has its shop and invites people in “na kawę i opowieść o niej”, for a coffee and the story behind it. It sets each roast by the variety and quality of the green coffee, and every coffee in the shop carries its roast date. The range has two sides: specialty micro-lots, from Rungeto’s Karimikui station in Kenya, Asef and Mulugeta Dukamo’s Shantawene Gatta in Ethiopia, Tanzania’s Songwe region and Hacienda Sonora in Costa Rica, and house coffees for espresso machines and moka pots. Kelleran runs coffee workshops and a 90-minute roasting demonstration that ends with a tasting brewed in a Chemex.
Szklarnia, Kleparz
Szklarnia, the greenhouse, is a vegan café in Kleparz, just north of the Old Town, for coffee, books and flowers. It opened in 2020 and is the eldest of three sisters: Zgoda Café followed in Nowa Huta in 2023, and Damka, the bakery west of the Old Town, bakes for both. Most of the time the filter coffee in the thermos is one the café chooses and Pale roasts for it, sold in cans decorated by artist friends of the café, and the shelf carries bags from other Polish roasters. Cakes and sandwiches sit on the counter, the bar pours beer, wine and cider as well as coffee and matcha, and friends play acoustic sets in the garden.
Zgoda Café, Nowa Huta
Zgoda Café is the Nowa Huta sister of Szklarnia, on a housing estate in Kraków’s eastern district, and everything it serves is plant-based. It opened in 2023 together with the Joga Centrum Nova Huta yoga studio, and its cakes come from Damka. Coffee is the centre of its events calendar: guest roasters come to cup at the big table, and a summer series of coffee workshops ran with Maciej Hura, a Q grader who teaches under the name “(nie)pali się”. The menu adds seasonal lunch bowls assembled by Damka, and the room also hosts matcha and alcohol-free tastings.
What you need to know about Kraków specialty coffee
Which Kraków coffee shops roast their own coffee? Karma roasts in Kazimierz for its café in Piasek, Pale roasts to order twice a week and is headquartered at Public Order, Coffee Rain roasts every Monday in Borek Fałęcki, String Taste roasts its espresso as Tens Coffee Roasters, and Kelleran roasts in Fort Luneta Warszawska.
Who roasts for the cafés that do not roast? Szklarnia’s house filter is roasted by Pale, and its shelf carries bags from other Polish roasters. Zgoda Café invites guest roasters to cup.
Which guest roasters does String Taste pour? String Taste pours filter from DAK, Morgon, Ineffable, Liquid Dream and Nomad beside its own espresso, and sells their bags.
Where is the food? Karma bakes cakes and its own bread and makes tarts, soups and a daily lunch menu at its café. String Taste serves vegetarian Latin American breakfasts at weekends and on holidays. Szklarnia and Zgoda Café both serve sandwiches and Damka’s plant-based cakes, and Zgoda Café adds lunch bowls assembled by Damka.
Which cafés are vegan? Szklarnia and Zgoda Café are entirely plant-based. Karma bakes vegan and gluten-free cakes, and String Taste’s breakfast menu includes a vegan lentil casserole.
Where can you learn about coffee? Kelleran runs coffee workshops, a home barista course and roasting demonstrations, Karma runs training sessions and cuppings at its Kazimierz roastery, and Zgoda Café hosts cuppings with guest roasters.
Photo credits
Photographs belong to the businesses and are reproduced from their official websites with attribution.
