Coffee trip – from the production process to the customer's home

The vision was implemented

Arnas Gudelis, the founder of Kavos merchant, said he has been roasting coffee for over seven years. It was a long -time vision of opening a whole new and open coffee roasting and physical store.

“It all started from 2017. rented 20 square meters of abandoned rooms at Klaipėda Shopping Base. After arranging them, we received the necessary permits and started our way as a coffee toast. In Lithuania, you probably will not learn how to roast coffee, so you had to learn this craft yourself: reading a lot of literature, constant roasting, consulting abroad, and often damaging coffee because mistakes are probably learned. And when you learn something, however, the efforts were gradually converted into a small but slow growing customer circle, whose expectations of our roasted coffee, its presentation and personal attention, justified. Today, I can be pleased and gratitude that many of the first customers have been buying coffee with us so far – all seven years. As the retail of the physical store has been opened for many years before the physical store has been opened only online, and now I remember well the names of all regular buyers, their favorite coffee, ”Gudelis recalled.

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Special equipment was needed

Special equipment for this purpose was also required for the implementation of the vision.

“We started with completely minimal investments. After a long search and finally we found a used 1.5 kg roasting machine. It had to be brought from the US. Later, just to take care of the small additional equipment and the green coffee beans. A year later, as the number of orders increases, the capacity of the equipment available is no longer sufficient. It is time for the first serious stage of growth, and we purchased a new 15 kg roasting machine. It acted on a completely different principle than our first apparatus, so it became clear that a smaller copy of our 15 kg machine was needed to replicate roasting profiles in small parties, so the roasting was supplemented by an analogue 2 kg apparatus, Why didn't we just have enough 15 kg of apparatus? Because from the very beginning, we sought to be as flexible as possible to the buyer as possible, so as, so now, we give each pre -ordered coffee the opportunity to choose a roasting level: light, medium or dark. Because everything www.kavapirklys.lt The purchased coffee is roasted after receiving the order, often roasting and extremely small coffee parties. That's when our roasted « baby » serves us. The purchase of new equipment also had to move to slightly larger premises. Although it was a space of about 70 square meters, it seemed huge to us then. Until a few more years later we were buying another one, only this time the 30 kg of roasting machine that needed to be « crushed » somewhere. This trio of roasting equipment makes up the capacity of our toast today, ”the interviewer said.

Offers a wide range

According to Mr Gudel, the « coffee merchant » is distinguished from other toasters in that they are extremely flexible to its customers – by pre -ordering www.kavapirklys.lt They can choose everything from roasting, grinding care to other parameters. It also offers an extremely wide range of coffee.

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Currently, there are 15 different regions of coffee from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, India, Myanmar and others. All of these coffee are the highest quality species Arabics.

“The highest quality species coffee is considered to be one that is rated by 80 or more according to the assessment system of the species Coffee Association. Coffee, which does not achieve these scores, is considered to be commercial, cheaper, because it is qualitatively lags behind the highest quality of coffee. We are exclusively only a kind of coffee and it is fun that people in Lithuania are increasingly appreciating quality, service experience and ordering speed, ”said A. Gudelis.

Customers are also interested in the opportunity to see the roasting process with their own eyes.

2024 was a year of fracture.

“Our physical store has a showcase that shows a roasting. And the windows show everything – our equipment, roasting process and the like. So we roast not in the production, closed zone, but openly to those around us. This is how we decided, because people often asked if they could come and see what the coffee roasting process looks like. Roasting coffee is really complicated and really fun, so it's fun that people can easily get to know it from the side, ”Gudel said.

From the Swiss – an estimate

At the end of 2024, at Rainiai, the address Karališkių g. 1, not only a coffee roasting, but also a physical store was opened for people. It is also noted that last year, the Coffee Merchant started cooperation with the Swiss coffee machine manufacturers.

“At the beginning of 2024, we contacted the JURA brand distributors in the Baltic States and introduced our vision – a coffee roasting and a coffee and coffee machine shop under one roof. It's really something new on the market. Probably many local coffee makers give you the opportunity to buy their roasted coffee directly from the roasting, but where you can both see the roasting process in real time and choose your new sea coffee machine, perhaps no longer. The Swiss liked our idea and turned out to be unique, so after signing a cooperation agreement, we became authorized Jura partners in Lithuania. Although at the beginning we sought to distribute only home -line products, the Jura offered to represent the product line for professional commercial use. It was like an evaluation we accepted with great responsibility. So the 2024 was a year of fracture, ”said Gudelis.

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Prices rose drastically

According to A. Gudelis, coffee businesses are currently experiencing a really difficult period. Coffee prices that are now has never been there. Coffee raw material is a stock exchange product, so the price of green coffee beans is directly dependent on the price level level.

“It is not easy to specify one reason why the coffee exchange is beating record highs, not easy, a set of different factors and circumstances, but as the main name of climate warming. In recent years, coffee cultivation regions have been encountered in drought, non -specific frost and other weather change factors that cause harvest. The main coffee breeders are Brazil in terms of Arabic coffee, and Vietnam is the largest supplier of Robusta coffee, there in 2024. less coffee was grown than expected, ”Gudel said.

There are trends in the world that coffee consumption is growing and coffee is not raised to meet everyone's needs, so the demand for coffee is currently higher than the coffee supply.

“We understand the dissatisfaction of coffee lovers about rising prices, but I can assure you that they are not really due to the greed of coffee activities and the aspiration to earn as much as possible. For example, if we started in 2017, We paid about 2 euros per kg for the raw material of Brazilian Arabica, which was 2024. In December, 7 euros per kg. Not a couple of months later, it costs more than € 10 per kg. And this trend is global. Coffee becomes more expensive everywhere: Lithuania, Germany, America, Australia. It is true that some can still be bought by a little cheaper coffee than the current price average, but it means that either coffee has been roasted for a long time and it has been in the warehouses of merchants or to roast an older, cheaper raw material, ”Gudel shared his insights.

What will be 2025-so far it is too early to predict. According to current trends, coffee consumption will not decrease, so it will depend on the amount of coffee grown this year.