Cape Town's coffee culture: the roasters, the beans and the price

How the speciality roasters arrived

The chain vida e caffè started in Cape Town, opening its first store on Kloof Street in 2001 and, by its own account, modelling itself on the street cafés of Portugal. It has since grown into a national chain, and Shoprite confirmed with its annual results, reported by Daily Maverick on 1 September 2026, that it was buying the business.

The speciality trade, which buys and roasts beans for their origin and flavour rather than their price, came a few years later. Origin Coffee Roasting opened on Hudson Street in De Waterkant on 9 May 2006, co-founded by Joel Singer. Bizcommunity, marking its twentieth anniversary in September 2026, described the market it entered as one in which beans were chosen mainly on cost and formal barista training barely existed. The café still stands on a floor made from 22 kilograms of salvaged espresso beans, ground and set in epoxy. The founders chose it when the original concrete slab proved too damaged to repair before opening day.

The Speciality Coffee Association of Southern Africa, known as SCASA, was formed in 2007 to run national competitions and promote the trade. Espresso Lab Microroasters followed in 2009 at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, founded by Renato Correia and Helene Vaerlien, and it told Coffee Magazine that it was the first to bring the cortado to South African menus. Deluxe Coffeeworks opened the same year, founded by Carl Wessel and Judd Nicolay. David Donde, who had worked with Origin, opened Truth on Buitenkant Street in 2012. He built it in an 1898 Victorian warehouse around a vintage Probat roaster, with a steampunk fit-out of cabling, mesh and steel plate.

Key dates, 2001 to 2026

The roasters working in 2026

1) Origin Coffee Roasting

28 Hudson Street, De Waterkant

Origin's café still trades at 28 Hudson Street. It brews espresso alongside V60, Chemex, siphon, AeroPress, plunger and Turkish coffee, and it also pours leaf teas from Nigiro. According to Bizcommunity and Cape Town Etc, both writing around the anniversary in late August and early September 2026, it has released more than 400 single-origin coffees and about 60 seasonal espresso blends over two decades. At its peak it supplied close to 150 wholesale customers, among them the One&Only and the Vineyard Hotel.

2) Truth

36 Buitenkant Street, East City

Truth remains in its warehouse at 36 Buitenkant Street. Time Out's guide to the East City, published in December 2025, called it perhaps the neighbourhood's most famous resident and one of the first local coffee shops to win global acclaim. The company names Andrzej Janik and Donde as its co-founders, and the Central City Improvement District reported in 2024 that the roastery was processing about six tonnes of coffee a month.

3) Espresso Lab Microroasters

Old Biscuit Mill, Woodstock, and De Waterkant

Espresso Lab still roasts at the Old Biscuit Mill and runs a second café in De Waterkant. In February 2026 Time Out reported that the De Waterkant café had been ranked 40th in the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops for 2026. It was the café's second year on the list, though outside the top ten this time, and IOL quoted Correia, as coffee director, on the result. The business is now part of Espressolab, a chain that began in Istanbul in 2014 and has more than 400 shops in Turkey. FLTR magazine describes Correia as its global coffee director, working across buying, sourcing and roasting. The roastery works with producers in Ethiopia, Peru and Colombia, and Correia told Coffee Magazine in 2020 that it prints the producers' names on its retail bags.

4) Rosetta Roastery

1 Osborne Road, Claremont, with cafés on Bree Street and in Gardens

Rosetta Roastery roasts in Claremont, at 1 Osborne Road, next to its own café, and runs further cafés on Bree Street and in a former 1960s hat factory at BlackBrick in Gardens, with a pop-up in the Silo District at the V&A Waterfront. Coffee Magazine visited the Claremont headquarters in November 2025 and found a variable menu priced by the coffee in the grinder, with Ethiopian and Indonesian lots on offer.

5) Deluxe Coffeeworks

Buitenkant Street, Kloof Street, Metal Lane and the Bo-Kaap

Deluxe Coffeeworks lists six cafés on its website, among them Buitenkant Street, Kloof Street, Metal Lane and the Bo-Kaap in Cape Town, with others in Stellenbosch and Paarden Eiland. The Proper Coffee guide last reviewed its Kloof Street café in April 2026 and noted rotating single origins from Tanzania, Kenya and Colombia roasted by the company itself.

The five roasters at a glance

Where the beans come from

South Africa grows very little of the coffee it drinks. The agricultural economist Wandile Sihlobo calculated in January 2025 that the country had imported an average of about 23,921 tonnes a year over the previous five years. Brazil and Vietnam together supplied 54 per cent of those imports, followed by Uganda with 8 per cent, Tanzania with 7 per cent, Colombia and Guatemala with 4 per cent each, and Ethiopia and Honduras with 3 per cent each.

Who supplies South Africa's imported coffee

Coffee has been farmed in South Africa, though never at scale. Writing for Coffee Magazine in 2019, the fourth-generation grower Dylan Cumming placed the country's plantings between Port St Johns and Empangeni in the east, with more in Mpumalanga. He cited figures published in 1975 of between 1,500 and 2,000 tons from about 1,000 hectares, and recorded that by 2001 fewer than 100 hectares remained in commercial production.

The speciality roasters buy small lots and list them by country, farm or cooperative. Origin's list in September 2026 included coffees from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Yemen, India, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. Rosetta's included lots from Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, Peru and Brazil, and the company says it tests more than 150 coffees a year to choose them. Truth's flagship Resurrection blend combines five lots, from Fazenda Paraiso and Poços de Caldas in Brazil, smallholder farms around Yirgacheffe in Ethiopia, Huehuetenango in Guatemala and the Allana estate in India.

What a cup costs in 2026

The clearest published figure comes from the chains. In March 2026 vida e caffè told the Sunday Times that its flat white sold for R39, R2 more than in 2024, and that its large cappuccino cost R43, up R3 over the same period. Speciality cafés tend to price by the bean. At Rosetta's Claremont café, Coffee Magazine found an espresso priced between R39 and R45 in November 2025, depending on which coffee was being used.

The same Sunday Times report set those prices against the commodity market. Arabica had fallen to US$7.08 a kilogram, 12 per cent lower than a month earlier and 22 per cent lower than a year before. Paul Makube, senior agricultural economist at FNB, warned that higher shipping, fuel and fertiliser costs linked to conflict in the Middle East could take that relief away. He added that a rand drifting back towards R17 to the US dollar would add to the pressure.

Writing in Daily Maverick in September 2026, Stephen Grootes put coffee price inflation at around 10 per cent, driven by poor harvests, bad weather and expensive diesel. He argued that Shoprite's purchase of vida e caffè could start a price war among the chains, which in his own Johannesburg suburb already trade across the road from one another.

Competitions and training

SCASA runs national championships for baristas, latte art and cup tasting, and its champions go on to represent the country at the world events. In August 2026 Xander Venter of Robin Chat Coffee won the South African Barista Championship from a field of 13 semi-finalists, with an international judge who had travelled from Malaysia on the panel. He will compete at the World Coffee Championships in Panama in October. Joshua Machelm of Yellow Jacket Coffee, a member of the Western Cape Cupping Crew, won the Cup Tasters Championship in February 2026. He identified seven of eight cups in both the preliminary round and the final, which earned him a place at the world event in Thailand. Christopher Abrahams of TP Coffee Academy took the latte art title.

Cape Town roasters have produced many of the country's champions. Origin alone counts five South African barista titles between 2007 and 2017, including that of Lovejoy Chirambaukwa, a Zimbabwean refugee who rose from the café floor to general manager and won both the national and All-Africa titles in 2013. Its barista academy trained about 3,500 people over 17 years, and in 2023 its training arm merged with those of Truth and Tribe Coffee to form the African School of Coffee, a nonprofit that trains African coffee professionals.

Cape Town has also featured in international rankings. Time Out reported in April 2024 that Cape Town had been placed ninth among the world's cities for coffee in Food & Wine's Global Tastemakers awards, ahead of Melbourne. The ranking gave special mentions to Truth and Deluxe Coffeeworks, and Time Out's report also pointed readers to Origin, Rosetta and Espresso Lab.

Morning coffee in Cape Town

The chains compete hard for people's morning coffee, and in Johannesburg Grootes has watched one offer coffee for under R30 to customers who buy before eight. The roasteries put more weight on filter menus and slower brewing methods, although at Truth a hatch also sells coffee and pastries straight onto the Buitenkant Street pavement.

Cape breakfasts include older drinks and bakes as well as coffee. In many Cape Malay homes, spiced koesisters are eaten warm with tea or coffee on a Sunday morning. Rooibos, a caffeine-free tea from a shrub that grows naturally only in the Cederberg and surrounding areas north-west of the city, is traditionally drunk hot with milk and sugar or honey. The Cape Town food guide covers both, and our feature on why Cape Town's food is so good covers the city's food more broadly.

Sources

1. "Origin Coffee Roasters marks 20 years building SA's specialty coffee market", Bizcommunity, 2 September 2026.
2. Angelica Rhoda. "Origin Coffee Roasters marks 20 years on Hudson Street", Cape Town Etc, 28 August 2026.
3. Origin Coffee Roasting. Origin Café and coffee list, checked September 2026.
4. vida e caffè. "Our story", checked September 2026.
5. Speciality Coffee Association of Southern Africa. "About SCASA", checked September 2026.
6. "CMA Nominee Focus: Espresso Lab Microroasters & Renato Correia", Coffee Magazine, 27 August 2020.
7. Kim Maxwell. "Cape Town entrepreneur David Donde's new business pursuits", Cape Town Central City Improvement District, 31 July 2024.
8. Richard Holmes. "A local's guide to the best of Cape Town's buzzy East City", Time Out, 10 December 2025.
9. Truth Coffee Roasting. "About us", Truth Café and coffee list, checked September 2026.
10. Deluxe Coffeeworks. Cafés, checked September 2026; Deluxe Coffeeworks Kloof Street, Proper Coffee, last reviewed April 2026; Deluxe Coffeeworks, Cape Town, Local Specialty Coffee, 2026.
11. Brandon Nel. "Espressolab De Waterkant: Cape Town's coffee shop ranked in the world's top 100", IOL, 19 February 2026.
12. "Home Barista Show Istanbul at Espressolab", FLTR magazine, 12 August 2026.
13. Selene Brophy. "Cape Town ranks amongst world's 100 best coffee shops", Time Out, 19 February 2026.
14. Espresso Lab Microroasters. "Our roastery", checked September 2026.
15. "New(ish) Kid on the Block: Rosetta Roastery HQ", Coffee Magazine, 17 November 2025.
16. Rosetta Roastery. "Locations" and coffee list, checked September 2026.
17. Wandile Sihlobo. "South Africans can expect to pay more for coffee", 9 January 2025.
18. Dylan Cumming. "A History of South African Coffee Farming", Coffee Magazine, 15 May 2019.
19. Thabiso Mochiko. "Slowdown in coffee bean prices may be short-lived due to Middle East conflict", Sunday Times, 21 March 2026.
20. Stephen Grootes. "Shoprite Vida deal could trigger a new coffee price war", Daily Maverick, 1 September 2026.
21. "2026 South African Barista Champion crowned!", Coffee Magazine, 13 August 2026.
22. "2026 Champions Crowned: SCASA National Cup Tasters and Latte Art", Coffee Magazine, 27 February 2026.
23. Richard Holmes. "Cape Town named one of world's best cities for coffee", Time Out, 29 April 2024.