Lykke Kaffegårdar, Lykke Coffee Farms in English, began with a question: how to run a coffee company without anyone or anything being harmed in the process. Its answer is to grow, buy and roast the coffee itself. Lykke owns its farms and the company together with the coffee farmers, and is setting up showcase farms in El Salvador and Panama, in the Andes, in Brazil and in East Africa, farmed organically and without monocultures. It also helps neighbouring growers improve their coffee, and in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda it runs its own washing station, working beside thousands of smallholders.

Lykke roasts in Kuopio and in Stockholm on a Loring S35, a closed-system roaster with a single burner that uses less gas than a traditional drum. The Stockholm roastery is in an old coal power station that once heated the buildings around it. The approach is “a soft approach, and a light touch”, with sweetness and balance as the goal rather than acidity alone.

Lykke Nytorget, on Södermalm, is “the place where our wet coffee dreams become a reality”: coffee from Lykke’s farms to the cup in an unbroken chain, with breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner, baked goods, cocktails, craft beer, and Lykke’s coffee and tea to take home. Every Thursday and Friday Lykke Live puts on small concerts for about 30 seated and 60 standing guests. Tables can be booked, dogs are welcome as long as they stay off the tables and sofas, and laptops are welcome, though on weekdays the staff may ask laptop users to move to the downstairs studio during lunch, and screens are not allowed at weekends.

Partner cafés

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Lykke Nytorget