Kafka's Coffee Roasting

Roasting, brewing, baking

Three words carry the whole business: roasting, brewing, baking. Kafka’s Coffee Roasting started with a single Main Street café in 2010 and has grown into a Vancouver roaster running its own cafés, a roasting plant and a wholesale side. The coffee is bought directly from farmers and roasted weekly, and the retail range shows how the menu is organised: an Espresso Blend for the bar, the Simpler Times Blend for everyday drinking, Ethiopia Kochere and Guatemala Milagro for single-origin cups, and a Swiss Water Process Guatemala for decaf. Espresso and batch brew are the two ways it reaches the counter, which keeps ordering simple even when the beans behind it are not. Roasting weekly is the part that shows at the bar, because it keeps whatever is in the hopper close to its roast date.

Kafka’s in the Park

The Richards Street café goes by Kafka’s in the Park, and it serves the downtown core with the same combination of coffee, baking and room to sit. The brand treats it as a community space for people who live, work and play downtown, so the experience is partly indoor café and partly public-realm hangout, which is unusual for a downtown block. It suits a working coffee too. Kafka’s puts wall space behind local arts, with curated gallery pop-ups giving the room something beyond the espresso machine. Across the wider group the same instincts show up as bright interiors, huge windows at the Gastown branch and a sun-soaked patio at Great Northern Way, so design and gathering space are part of the coffee rather than a backdrop to it.

Espresso first, then the bake

Start with espresso, because Kafka’s is roaster as much as café and the house Espresso Blend is the most direct way to taste the roast. The bar is set up to keep it dialled with a full drinks menu ready, so there is nothing to negotiate. If batch brew is running, the named coffees give the direction: Ethiopia Kochere and Guatemala Milagro for single origins, Simpler Times for something less demanding. For a cup or a bag without caffeine, the Swiss Water Process Guatemala covers it. Then move to the bake. Fresh baked goods are paired with Vancouver-roasted coffee, and the Great Northern Way bakery supplies pastries, breads, breakfast and lunch items across the group. The promise is not complicated: roasting, brewing and baking under one name.