Fancy Beans Specialty Coffee

Roasting for Enschede

Everything at Fancy Beans starts with the roaster. The bar roasts its own coffee in Enschede and pours it a few metres from where it was roasted, which is unusual in a city that came late to specialty coffee. The shop opened in 2023 and is generally credited as the first specialty coffee bar in Enschede, with an ambition stated plainly: to make Twente’s coffee habit more aware of what good coffee tastes like.

The house range is compact and named rather than numbered: Dark Desire, Golden Standard, Tropical Safari and Chocolate Bomb. Four coffees is enough to cover the bar and the retail shelf without turning the counter into a catalogue. Fancy Beans was recognised in the 2025 European Coffee Trip awards.

Plantation, roast, extraction

The house explains its work in three stages, and it is worth knowing which one it cares about most. At plantation level, it works closely with growers and pays above the commodity rate for beans. At the roastery, the emphasis falls on craft and on freshness after roasting rather than on shelf life. At the bar, extraction is treated as the stage that can undo the other two.

That last stage is why the counter is talkative. Grind, dose and brew method are part of the conversation if you want them to be, and there are workshops for anyone who would rather learn the whole sequence than be handed the answer.

What to drink and what to take home

Order whichever of the four coffees is on the bar. The names give away the register: Dark Desire and Chocolate Bomb at the deeper end, Tropical Safari at the brighter one, and Golden Standard as the everyday cup between them. Tea is on the menu for anyone not drinking coffee.

Then look at the shelf, because that is the other half of the business. Beans go home in retail bags, and the shop also sells brewing accessories, machines and the servicing to keep them working, along with coffee supply for offices. It is a café that behaves like a coffee company, and the bar is the shop window.