Nine coffees. Two roast days. One table.
We are four people in a shed on the Keileweg, between a shipyard and a skate park. Small enough that the person who bought the coffee is the person who roasted it and the person who answers your email.
A short shelf is a decision, not a limitation
Most online roasters list forty coffees. It looks generous and it is mostly warehousing — half of those lots have been sitting in a sack since last harvest, and nobody on the team could tell you what a third of them taste like.
We hold nine at a time. Every one is bought in a lot we can finish inside four months, and every one has been on our cupping table at least three times before it goes on sale. When something runs out we replace it with something that occupies the same corner of the three scales, so the shelf always covers the whole range instead of drifting towards whatever we personally like drinking.
That is also why the taste finder can work at all. Nine coffees you know properly can be scored honestly. Forty cannot.
From a sample bag to your kitchen
- Samples arrive. Importers send 200 g of anything they think fits what we buy. We get through roughly forty samples for every lot we take.
- We roast them identically. One sample profile, no adjustments, no favours. If a coffee only shows well when you roast around its faults, it is not going on the shelf.
- Four people, one table, Thursday morning. Blind, in the same room, scoring acidity, body and roast potential on the same 1–5 scales you see on every product. Two of the four have to want it.
- We buy the whole lot. Price agreed before picking wherever the relationship allows it, so the farm is not carrying our risk. The lot size on each product page is the real number.
- Profile development. Between four and nine roasts to find the curve, tasted against the sample each time.
- It goes up, scored. The three numbers on the bag are the cupping table's, not a marketing department's.
The bar is open five days a week
Six seats, a bench outside, and whatever is on the shelf available as filter or espresso. Wednesday to Sunday, roasting happens behind the glass on Tuesdays and Fridays if you want to watch.
Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H)
Getting here: metro to Marconiplein, then eight minutes on foot or two on a bike. Parking on the street is free. There is a bike rack by the roller door.
The practical questions
When will my coffee arrive?
We roast Tuesday and Friday. Order before 10:00 on a roast day and it goes out that afternoon; otherwise it waits for the next one. Delivery is one to three working days after that, tracked. You get the tracking number by email.
What does shipping cost?
Netherlands and Belgium €4.50. Everywhere else we ship in the EU, €8.90. Free over €35 in both cases. We do not currently ship outside the EU — the coffee spends too long in customs and arrives past its best.
What if I do not like it?
Email us within 30 days, tell us what was wrong with it, and we send a different coffee at no charge. You keep the first bag — posting coffee back and forth helps nobody. It happens about once a month and we would rather know.
How do subscriptions work?
Choose every two or four weeks on any coffee and it is 10% off, every time. The day before each roast you get an email with three buttons: skip, swap the coffee, or cancel. No account, no login, no minimum number of deliveries.
Should I buy whole bean or ground?
Whole bean if you own a grinder, without question — ground coffee loses most of its aroma within a quarter of an hour. If you do not, tell us your brewer at checkout and we grind to order on the morning it ships. Buy 250 g bags rather than a kilo in that case.
Do you supply cafés and offices?
Yes, from 5 kg a month, with a grinder loan and a training morning included. Write to trade@riftroasters.nl and tell us the machine, the milk volume and how many people you are caffeinating.
Demo note: Rift Coffee Roasters does not exist. The company, the coffees, the addresses and the reviews were invented to demonstrate a shop where products are chosen by taste rather than by category. The code, the accessibility work and the performance are real.
Nine coffees. Three scales. Two minutes.
You do not need to know what a washed Yirgacheffe is to buy one you will enjoy. Move the sliders and let the shelf answer.