Coutume, Paris — Coffee Dash

Coutume was founded in 2010 by Tom Clark, who set out to redefine coffee standards in France against the habits of the time. In 2011 its first roastery and coffee shop opened in Paris, a living laboratory where roasting, tasting and teaching met, and it was among the companies that helped specialty coffee emerge in France. The tagline is “Le café de spécialité, sans compromis”, and its mission is to make specialty coffee accessible to everyone. The company has won four consecutive French Brewers Cup titles.

Roasting moved in 2022 to a 750 m² roastery in Romainville, east of Paris, which handles 65 tonnes a year from more than thirty origins, among them Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Indonesia, Uganda, Costa Rica and Colombia. Coutume now has fifteen coffee shops, ninety employees and more than 350 professional clients, from independent coffee shops to starred chefs, and it also sets up coffee bars in office buildings. The pastries and the savoury menu are made in its Romainville kitchen.

Babylone, in the 7th near Sèvres-Babylone, is the original coffee shop and takes reservations. The baristas serve the coffees as espresso and by slow methods, with brunch, lunch and a seasonal menu, and the room doubles as a shop for the bags. Nine others are Poissonnière near Cadet and the Hôtel Mathis near the Champs-Élysées, which also serve brunch; coffee shops inside the La Procure bookshop by Saint-Sulpice, on the second floor of the Galeries Lafayette Haussmann with pastry chef François Daubinet, and in La Grande Épicerie de Paris in Passy; a café at the Fondation Fiminco in Romainville a few metres from the roastery; and three in the western suburbs, two at La Défense and one at Westfield Parly 2.

The retail range is sorted into four lines, Grands Crus, Déguster for rare lots, Explorer for singular coffees and Apprécier for accessible ones, each sold whole bean or ground for piston, filter, moka or espresso.