Pale - Specialty Coffee Shop & Roaster in Kraków

Pale is a specialty coffee roastery in Kraków, “bringing people together to make beautiful things”. 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 is headquartered at Public Order, a café in Krowodrza.

Pale roasts to order on Mondays and Thursdays and ships retail orders the following day. The range has three lines. Pale Filter coffees are “selected and roasted without compromise”, with lots such as a Liberica and Excelsa from 96B in Vietnam and a geisha from Peñas Blancas in Colombia. Pale Mini is crafted for batch brew, cold brew and everyday filter. Pale Espresso, currently a Brazilian natural, is made to serve solo or with milk, and Pale Espresso Plus is selected from brighter origins. The coffees come in 200 g retail cans, 40 g mini cans (małpki) and 1 kg bulk, and the Recipe Centre gives brewing recommendations for the filter coffees.

There is also a monthly subscription box with two małpki of the team’s favourites or coffees not offered to the public, and a cold drip sold in cans. Pale’s merchants run from cafés across Poland, among them Szklarnia in Kraków, to bars in Europe, Japan and the United States.