Michał Ciupiński of Błysk is the 2026 Polish Barista Champion, Story’s head of coffee is the 2024 Polish roasting champion, Klaro’s team has won the Polish AeroPress Championship, JAVA’s head roaster won the national roasting title in 2018, and Cafelito organises the Polish AeroPress Championship, which Ministerstwo Kawy hosted from 2012 to 2014. Seven of these ten businesses roast their own coffee: Ministerstwo Kawy, JAVA, ROST, Cafelito, Klaro, Story and El Cafetero. STOR pours ROST, the roastery its team co-founded, Forum’s monthly subscription picks coffees from roasters across Europe, and Błysk is an espresso bar run by competition baristas. Half of these businesses have a café in Śródmieście, two of them by Plac Zbawiciela, with others in Powiśle, Wola, Ochota, Bielany, Żoliborz and Grochów, on the right bank.
Ministerstwo Kawy, Plac Zbawiciela and Bielany
Ministerstwo Kawy opened in 2011 by Plac Zbawiciela and pours only lighter roasts of single-origin coffee. Much of it comes from roasters the café has worked with for years, among them Koppi, Gardelli and Right Side. It hosted the Polish AeroPress Championship in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and many of its baristas went on to open cafés of their own. A second café opened in Stare Bielany in 2021, and it now houses Ministerstwo Kawy’s own roastery, built around a ROEST P3000. Some of the coffee in both cafés’ milk drinks and quick filters is roasted there, a Brazilian Red Catuai and a Kenyan lot from Mutitu among them. At the Plac Zbawiciela café, laptops go only at the designated seats on weekdays, and not at all at weekends.
JAVA Coffee Roasters, the Norblin Factory
JAVA Coffee Roasters was founded in 2001, out of the Stoney Point Java cafés that opened in Warsaw in 1999 and roasted on a 1970s Probat. After Glen Gregory became managing director in 2004, the company closed the cafés to concentrate on roasting, and its specialty work began in 2005. It joined the Cup of Excellence programme in 2009 and opened the JAVA University training centre the same year. Today it roasts on a 35 kg Loring Kestrel and a Diedrich CR-25, with blind cupping of every batch, and it has never roasted robusta. Its head roaster won the Polish roasting championship in 2018 and came eighth at the World Coffee Roasting Championship in Rimini in 2019. JAVA CAFE began in 2013 as a five-square-metre pop-up at the BioBazar organic market and is now a 50-square-metre café at the market’s entrance in the Norblin Factory, with the roastery’s beans, SUKI teas, plant milks at no extra charge and a menu that changes for summer and winter.
ROST, Grochów
ROST has roasted in Warsaw since 2021 and in 2025 opened a café in Grochów, across the river, combined with its micro-roastery, where guests can watch the whole roasting process over their coffee. The roaster is an electric Stronghold, chosen to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The green coffee comes from partner importers, the bags are compostable, made of paper and corn starch, and the team gets around the city in an electric van. Its slogan is “Coffee That Cares”. ROST also roasts other businesses’ green coffee to their profiles, hires out its roaster by the hour and packs coffee under clients’ own labels.
STOR, Powiśle and Śródmieście
STOR has poured coffee since 2014. Its café in Powiśle, next to the Chopin Museum, has walls whose colour changes with the light from the huge shop windows. The other, in Śródmieście beside the Smyk department store, started as a summer pop-up and stayed, with a pre-war mosaic floor, a mezzanine and a summer garden. Its coffee is roasted at ROST, which STOR’s owner, Krzysiek Rzyman, and general manager, Aleksander Tęcza, co-founded. STOR works to cut single-use plastic, food waste and emissions in its cafés, brought out the Coffee Spots Polska and Varsavia Coffee Spots guides, and sells its own hand-decorated porcelain from Lubiana.
Cafe Central by Cafelito, five cafés
Cafelito Coffee roasts its own coffee and runs five cafés in Warsaw under the name Cafe Central: two in Śródmieście, one in Powiśle and two in Wola. The cafés pour Cafelito’s coffee and sell its beans, from blends named after animals to single lots from East Africa and Central America, and a Fine Robusta from the Kaweri plantation in Uganda, fermented without oxygen for 48 hours before drying. Cafelito organises the Polish AeroPress Championship, with qualifying heats in other cafés; the 2026 final was held at Coffee Europe Expo in Nadarzyn, outside Warsaw, on 17 September.
Klaro Coffee, Ochota
Klaro Coffee started as a one-man roastery. Its founder, Maks, has been deep in coffee since 2015, and the team’s competition record includes first places in the Polish AeroPress Championship and the Sensory Battle Championship. He built Klaro with Ania, who helps organise international barista competitions and coffee festivals, and Robert later joined them to run the day to day. The name comes from the Spanish “claro”, and the aim is to make good coffee simple. Klaro Coffee HQ in Ochota measures nineteen square metres, in stainless steel and the brand’s burgundy tiles, and serves Klaro’s coffees, helps people choose beans for home and hosts workshops and tastings. The Batch Brew series is made for people who drink filter coffee by the litre.
Story Coffee Roasters, Bielany
Story Coffee Roasters roasts on a gas drum roaster that takes up to 15 kg a batch, with a computer system tracking bean and air temperature, airflow and drum speed. Its co-founder and head of coffee, Robert Rybczyński, won the Polish Coffee Roasting Championship in 2024, and production is run by Rafa, who started as a barista and roaster in Barcelona. The café in Bielany, on the same avenue as Ministerstwo Kawy’s second café, pours only Story’s coffee, with two espressos and at least two filter coffees to choose from at any time, new lots first and fresh cakes every day. Story also sells machines and grinders and runs barista, latte art, brewing and cupping courses.
El Cafetero, Śródmieście and Plac Zbawiciela
El Cafetero is a roastery, café and pâtisserie. It roasts in small batches at its café in Śródmieście and runs a second café on Plac Zbawiciela, where Ministerstwo Kawy opened its first. Both serve its coffee as espresso drinks and as filter brewed by several methods, with cakes and pastries from its own pâtisserie. The range keeps classic, balanced coffees next to more experimental, fruit-led lots, with a Reserve Limited line of micro-lots and La Mixtura as its house filter blend.
Forum, Śródmieście
Forum is a café in Śródmieście with its own baking and breakfasts of its own devising. Every month Forum’s Ilona and Sławek pick two coffees from European roasters for subscribers and introduce them with notes on the farm and the cup. The 2026 boxes have carried coffees from Koppi, The Barn, Coffee Collective, Standout, Drop Coffee, Doubleshot, La Cabra, Five Elephant and Prolog, among others. October’s pair was a washed Caturra from El Porvenir in Huila, a farm whose whole harvest Koppi has bought for several years, and a natural Bourbon from Finca Himalaya in El Salvador, roasted by The Barn.
Błysk Espresso Bar, Żoliborz
Its founders opened Błysk Espresso Bar in 2022, after more than a decade of working with coffee, to run a place where specialty coffee and hospitality matter equally. Michał Ciupiński is the 2026 Polish Barista Champion, and the bar holds the Polish Coffee in Good Spirits title for 2025 and 2026, after third place in the national barista championship in 2023 and second in 2024 and 2025. Under the Kawexpol name the owners teach sensory, brewing, barista and latte art courses at the same address, for groups of up to three. Guest baristas take over the bar in the Brewing With The Stars series, whose third season ended in September 2026.
What you need to know about Warsaw specialty coffee
Which Warsaw coffee shops roast their own coffee? Ministerstwo Kawy roasts part of its coffee at its Bielany café, JAVA was founded as a roastery in 2001, ROST roasts in its Grochów café, Cafelito roasts for the five Cafe Central cafés, and Klaro, Story and El Cafetero pour their own coffee in their cafés.
Which roasters do the other cafés serve? STOR pours coffee roasted at ROST. Ministerstwo Kawy pours coffee from guest roasters such as Koppi, Gardelli and Right Side next to its own roasts.
Where can you watch coffee being roasted? At ROST in Grochów, where guests can watch the roasting from the café.
Which cafés have competition pedigree? Błysk’s Michał Ciupiński is the 2026 Polish Barista Champion, and the bar holds the 2025 and 2026 Coffee in Good Spirits titles. Story’s Robert Rybczyński is the 2024 Polish roasting champion, Klaro’s team has won the Polish AeroPress Championship, and JAVA’s head roaster won the national roasting title in 2018. Cafelito organises the Polish AeroPress Championship, which Ministerstwo Kawy hosted from 2012 to 2014.
Where can you learn about coffee? JAVA runs the JAVA University, Story teaches barista, latte art, brewing and cupping courses, Klaro hosts workshops and tastings at its HQ, and Błysk’s owners teach in their workshop under the Kawexpol name.
Can you work on a laptop? At Ministerstwo Kawy by Plac Zbawiciela, laptops go only at the designated seats on weekdays, and not at weekends or on public holidays.
Photo credits
Photographs belong to the businesses and are reproduced from their official websites with attribution.
