Five of these six Riga coffee businesses roast their own coffee. Rocket Bean roasts in Latvia and runs five cafés in the city. KALVE started in a garage in 2017 and now has six cafés in Riga. Tiny Giant pours its coffee at its own café, Tiny House. STRADA has roasted since 2018 for its coffee and tea bar in Old Riga, and MiiT serves its own espresso roast next to a mostly vegan kitchen. The sixth, Better Bread, is a gluten-free bakery pouring coffee roasted by da Matteo in Gothenburg. Most of these Riga coffee shops are in the city centre, with one KALVE café across the river at Āgenskalns Market.
Rocket Bean Roastery, five cafés in Riga
Rocket Bean is a Latvian roaster run by King Coffee Service. It has been working for more than 15 years and has a team of over 70 people across the Baltics. Before it agrees a deal with a farmer, the team checks that the farm’s processing methods meet its standards; the green coffee is then shipped to Latvia and roasted there. Rocket Bean has won several gold medals at the Global Coffee Awards, among them for its Colombia decaf and for Rocket Fuel. Its Cold Brew Coffee Kombucha is made with Hard Tank technology, which was named Best Innovation in the Coffee Industry in 2020. The kombucha won Best New Product in the Open Class at World of Coffee 2022 in Milan. Rocket Bean Miera is the roastery café. Four more Rocket Bean cafés are spread around central Riga and the Jaunā Teika district, and the roaster also has cafés in Tallinn and Vilnius.
KALVE Coffee Roasters, six cafés in Riga
KALVE began in 2017, when Gatis Zēmanis and Raimonds Selga started roasting coffee in a small garage. Its first coffee shop opened in Riga in 2019, the year KALVE came second at the international Roast Masters competition; it returned in 2025 and took first place. KALVE became a certified B Corp in 2023 and a publicly listed company in 2024, and it buys coffees that score 82 points and above. The signature espressos are blends: Chocolate Bar, of Brazil and Uganda, has been the house espresso since 2017, and Marmalade was created for Roast Masters 2019 in Milan. The seasonal single origins are roasted light for filter.
KALVE Stabu, the first of the six, opened in 2019 as a showroom and is where KALVE Bakery baked its first pastel de nata and cardamom pastry. KALVE Baznīcas, between two churches, has a bench by the door that stays out all year and a large terrace in summer. Another café is inside Āgenskalns Market, on the left bank of the Daugava. KALVE Miera hosts conversation evenings, dance performances and Breakfast Club mornings, and KALVE Living Room, opened in 2025 across the street from the National Museum of Art, is now where the bakery works every morning. The sixth is KALVE Old Town, and KALVE also has cafés in Tallinn, Vilnius, Paris and Lisbon.
Tiny Giant, Tiny House in the centre
Tiny Giant is a specialty coffee roastery that believes in “the power of small things”. The team has more than eight years in specialty coffee and five in roasting, buys only green coffees scored 80 points or more, and works out a roast profile for each one. Its espresso side is built on a natural Mundo Novo from the Vargem Grande farm in Minas Gerais, alone or blended with a washed lot from Peru, and the filter coffees come from Brazil, Ethiopia, Kenya and Peru. The decaf is a Mountain Water lot from La Tribu, a producer organisation in Chiapas, Mexico. Tiny House, the roastery’s own café in central Riga, adds seasonal drinks such as an orange mocha and a maple and cinnamon cappuccino to its menu. In October 2026 Tiny Giant was named among the top five specialty cafés in Latvia at the European Coffee Trip Awards.
STRADA, Old Riga
STRADA started in 2004 as a tea trading company and began roasting specialty coffee in 2018, first on a small roaster inside the coffee shop and then, once demand outgrew it, on a new roaster in a separate space. Being small lets it buy many coffees in small batches and change the range and roast profiles quickly, and it packs the coffee in recyclable, resealable bags with paper labels. The coffee and tea bar is in Old Riga, with a sunny terrace. It brews espresso, AeroPress, pour-over and Chemex, serves coffee mixology and cold brew, and keeps a tea list curated by tea masters, from aged pu-erh to Taiwanese oolongs. The room is also STRADA art, a gallery for exhibitions, tastings and small cultural events, and the roastery sells green coffee for home roasting as well as roasted beans.
MiiT Coffee, central Riga
MiiT Coffee has been in Riga’s city centre since 2014. Every espresso-based drink is made with MiiT’s own specialty-grade espresso roast, sold in bags at the bar, and single-origin coffee is brewed by hand on AeroPress, V60, Kalita and Chemex. The kitchen is vegetarian and nearly everything on it is fully vegan, with gluten-free options too. The menu runs from an English breakfast with fried eggs or tofu scramble to a quinoa bowl, an artichoke pizza and cakes, nearly all of them vegan. The room is filled with art, and MiiT sets tables for up to 50 guests for celebrations.
Better Bread, the Quiet Centre
Better Bread is a small family bakery in Riga’s Quiet Centre, opened by Sergei and Alena, where everything is gluten-free. The bread is made with organic flours and a sourdough starter kept since the first day, with quinoa, buckwheat and corn flour and no chemical additives, and the bakers start at four in the morning. The bakery is an open space, so guests can watch the baking over coffee. Sergei has taken courses at the SCA Coffee Academy and holds an intermediate barista diploma, and the coffee comes from da Matteo, roasted in Sweden and brought over from Gothenburg.
What you need to know about Riga specialty coffee
Which Riga coffee shops roast their own coffee? Rocket Bean roasts in Latvia for its five Riga cafés, one of them the roastery café Rocket Bean Miera, KALVE roasts in Latvia for its six Riga cafés, Tiny Giant roasts for its café Tiny House, STRADA roasts for its bar in Old Riga, and MiiT serves its own espresso roast.
Which roaster does Better Bread serve? Better Bread pours coffee roasted in Sweden by da Matteo of Gothenburg.
Where can you eat vegan or gluten-free? Nearly everything in MiiT’s vegetarian kitchen is fully vegan, with gluten-free options, and everything at Better Bread is gluten-free.
Can you work on a laptop? KALVE Stabu, Baznīcas, Miera, Āgenskalns Market and Living Room have no Wi-Fi, but laptops are welcome at any table not marked “No laptops”.
Can you book a table? MiiT takes table reservations through WhatsApp. KALVE Miera and KALVE Living Room take no reservations.
Where can you drink specialty coffee in Old Riga? STRADA’s coffee and tea bar is in Old Riga, and so is KALVE Old Town.
Where can you buy beans? Rocket Bean, KALVE, Tiny Giant and STRADA sell their coffee online, and MiiT sells its espresso roast in bags at the bar.
Photo credits
Photographs belong to the businesses and are reproduced from their official websites with attribution.
