ONIBUS COFFEE was founded in Tokyo in January 2012 and is led by its representative director, Atsushi Sakao. Its line is “Connecting people through coffee”, and in Japanese, enriching towns and daily life through coffee: linking the people who grow, serve and drink coffee on fair terms, and putting down roots for a coffee culture in Japan.

ONIBUS buys only coffees that score 85 points or more at the cupping table. It visits producing countries as often as it can and buys as directly as it can, favouring farms that look after the people and land around them, with schooling for workers’ children, protected working conditions or organic fertiliser. Its transparency reports on green coffee buying run from 2022. The roasting team cups every roast once a week, and baristas pass several skill tests before they serve at an ONIBUS or ABOUT LIFE COFFEE BREWERS bar. In July 2026 ONIBUS Inc. became a certified B Corp. Its Soil Project in Rwanda turns the by-products of coffee processing into compost to restore soil and biodiversity, and it measures its own carbon emissions.

In Tokyo, ONIBUS runs a coffee stand by Nakameguro station, a second shop in Nakameguro 3-chome opened in September 2024, its roastery shop in Yakumo and a shop in Jiyugaoka, along with two ABOUT LIFE COFFEE BREWERS stands in Shibuya, at Dogenzaka and in Shibuya 1-chome. Outside Tokyo there is a shop inside GOOD NEWS NEIGHBORS in Nasu, Tochigi. Abroad, ONIBUS COFFEE has shops in Taipei and Taichung, where it opened in early 2025, and two in Bangkok, one of them in the Central Park development, and ABOUT LIFE COFFEE BREWERS has a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. ONIBUS also sells coffee wholesale, advises on opening new cafés and runs a dessert brand, patisserie code.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: ONIBUS COFFEE