Solberg & Hansen Concept Store

The shelves come first at Solberg & Hansen’s Mathallen store: seasonal coffee roasted at the company’s Ryen roastery, stacked beside tea, brew gear and a full espresso menu. Solberg & Hansen has been roasting since 1879, which makes it Norway’s first roasting company, and it calls this Vulkan branch a concept store and a knowledge centre rather than a cafe.

A coffee and tea showroom with a bar attached

Think showroom with drinks service. The shelves hold freshly roasted seasonal coffee from Ryen, where roast profiles are developed for each coffee, and the company buys high-quality beans directly from farmers, roasts them in Oslo and runs daily quality control. That ties what sits on the shelf to the roastery rather than to a wholesale catalogue.

The drinks cover coffee, tea and a full espresso menu, with hand brew alongside the machine. Brew gear sits next to the beans and the tea, so an order can turn into a conversation about grinders and drippers as easily as it can stay a flat white.

Courses, tastings and barista guidance

Education is the other half of the concept-store model. Courses and tastings run here, tea courses among them, and the baristas are there to be asked rather than only to serve. That consultative feel is what separates the counter from a food-hall coffee stand.

Mathallen shapes the rest of it. This is a specialist stop inside a food hall rather than a long-stay cafe with a kitchen behind it, so the visit is tasting, buying and talking rather than settling in for an afternoon. The staff are dedicated to the counter and know the range, which matters most when you are comparing coffees rather than grabbing one.

Plan around coffee, tea and gear

Come for espresso, hand brew, tea, retail beans, equipment and the chance to learn something, rather than for breakfast or a meal. The strongest reasons to choose it are roaster-led: heritage back to 1879, direct farmer relationships, Oslo roasting, and the Ryen profiles standing behind every bag on the shelf.

The Mathallen concept store dates to 2012 and has had more than a decade to settle into that role. Treat it as the place to taste a seasonal coffee, buy the bag, pick up a dripper and filters, book onto a course, and leave knowing more about what you are drinking than when you walked in.