BEANDEPENDENT is a small one-person coffee shop and micro-roastery in Leopoldstadt, near the Augarten and next to the Volkertmarkt, open since the summer of 2024. It is a third wave café at heart, built in a corner of the Volkertviertel with a sleepy reputation, with the aim of giving the neighbourhood a Grätzl-Café, a local café where the coffee comes first. The room is simple and pared back: “BEANDEPENDENT is here for coffee.”
Every coffee brewed and served is roasted in house and sold for home brewing. Batches are kept small, 500 g for filter and up to 1,000 to 1,200 g for espresso, and each coffee is roasted for the way it will be brewed rather than to a shade of light, medium or dark. Most green coffee comes through importers such as Falcon, Omwani Coffee Co., Green Coffee Collective and Mercanta, and there is a direct-trade link to a family-run farm in Nyeri, Kenya, whose very small lots appear as limited editions called “Origin Originals”. The line-up rotates through seasonal single origins, single estates and micro lots, with a Signature Blend for espresso and a decaf as staples.
The menu keeps espresso classics, modern drinks and hand-brewed filter on all the time, with seasonal specials such as iced coffees in summer. The bar at the centre of the room was designed with capeland, welded by ps architecture and clad in panels of recycled PET from fantoplast. Behind it, the micro-roastery houses a La Marzocco Home showroom with the Linea Micra, Linea Mini R, a custom GS/3 and the Pico grinder.
Photograph: BEANDEPENDENT