Eight years ago, baristas in Kyiv had to argue with customers about how high-quality coffee should taste. The smooth flavor balancing sweetness, acidity and bitterness that connoisseurs prefer seemed bizarre to the locals, who were used to drinking it bitter.
“It was a rough war,” says Slava Babych, a star Ukrainian barista who has won a world championship in his art.
At the time, the first cafes of the so-called “third wave” were just beginning to appear in the Ukrainian capital. They served specialty coffees of the highest grade and experimented with blending bean varieties and roasting techniques. Those first establishments laid the foundation for Kyiv’s now famous coffee culture.
Bean’s big bang
According to a report by the international industry resource Allegra World Coffee Portal, Kyiv’s coffee market was the third fastest-growing in Europe in 2019.
It wasn’t always that way.
Changes started in Kyiv’s coffee culture in 2011. Babych remembers that, before that, it was hard to find a high-quality coffee drink. The Wolkonsky chain of cafes and bakeries, which came to Ukraine from Russia, was a rare exception.
The market was filled with commercial coffee chains that approached their field as pure business: they used cheap beans, offered nothing but classical drinks with milk and were focused on quickly delivering caffeine rather than tasty experience.
One of the first third-wave cafes was Espressoholic, a small spot that opened in the Podil district in 2011. Over the years, they grew into a chain that now has six locations and is known for serving some of the best coffee drinks.
The Chashka Espresso Bar opened its doors in 2012, a year after Espessoholic. Located in the very center of Kyiv, on Bessarabska Square, amid the city’s hustle and bustle, Chashka had a driven team of coffee lovers behind the bar.
Chashka, which means “cup” in Ukrainian, was largely inspired by the U.S. coffee culture that restaurateur Igor Sukhomlyn decided to bring to Kyiv. The cafe played with bean varieties, roasted fresh beans themselves and offered alternative drinks, such as pour over.
At their Sunday school, Chashka’s baristas shared knowledge about the art of making and consuming coffee with the fans of the drink. Babych, who worked there, says that they explained the basics – the types of drinks and how they’re made. He says that for the school’s attendees, ‘pour over’ was an alien term at the time.
Babych says that some of Chashka’s guests stood firm in their preferences. One of the biggest issues was the temperature of the drink, as residents were used to drinking them hot, which is considered to be a low standard in the barista world.
For those customers, the café’s baristas heated the cups and milk until they were satisfied.
“I still remember this customer making a sip, when it’s clear she’s burning her tongue but says that it still could be hotter,” Babych says.
Following the pioneers, Espressoholic and Chashka, the cafes of the third wave started filling the city center and approaching coffee-making not as just a profitable business, but as culture and craft.
They invested in expensive equipment, introduced previously unknown brewing methods, used top-quality bean varieties and roasted them themselves, blending different kinds to discover new flavors.
The new generation of cafes also invested in design, bringing minimalist looks to the city landscape in contrast to the bright-colored identities that commercial chains usually used to grab people’s attention. Another contrast was the third-wave cafes’ comfy furniture and welcoming atmosphere encouraging visitors to stay longer and return repeatedly.
The culture that captured Kyiv triggered developments in the roasting craft, raised the prestige of the barista profession and increased the number of cafes serving specialty coffee.
A barista prepares a drink as he takes part in a competition at the Kyiv Coffee Festival on April 2, 2016, in Kyiv.
Kyiv’s coffee boom
Today Kyiv is hard to distinguish from world coffee capitals. New establishments pop up practically every week, and the city has at least three coffee festivals in addition to numerous, irregular educational events. And there is even an online media specializing exclusively in Ukraine’s coffee business.
The Allegra portal’s latest report on the European coffee market shows that Kyiv experienced a 16% growth on the coffee front last year, with 225 cafes compared to 194 in 2018.
The numbers won Kyiv third place in the lineup of Europe’s fastest-growing coffee markets, following Romania and Kazakhstan. Although the overall increase in the European coffee market has slowed, unsaturated regions in Eastern countries continue to discover the potential of the industry. Ukraine is no exception.
And with the growth of coffee retailers, the demand for high-quality beans has mushroomed as well. The Ukrainian roasting market has grown to about 300 roasters, according to Olena Sereda, the national coordinator of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian roasters have started to make their presence known at international events like Berlin’s World of Coffee exhibition and the London Coffee Festival. They are also getting their first deals with the field’s global players. In 2017, Ukrainian Yulia Saichuk, who works at one of the biggest local roasters, Svit Kavy, finished fifth at the World Coffee Roasting Championship.
The Ukrainian branch of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe, which holds seven national championships, also saw an increasing interest in the profession of a barista.
The growing competition and high quality of local cafes provoked a wellspring of talent among baristas, and, in 2018, Babych became the first Ukrainian to win an international championship: He competed in making coffee with a cezve, a small pot with a handle designed for preparing Turkish coffee. Following Babych, Ukraine’s Tetiana Tarykina finished second in the same contest in 2019.
According to Sereda, Ukraine has shown strong results in other competitions as well, rarely finishing outside the top 10 in events like cup tasting and AeroPress.
She says that the international contests boost the skills and expertise of contenders, which has an impact on the whole local market. When baristas prepare for the championships, they thoroughly select beans, pick accessories and explore roasting techniques. At the events, they communicate with hundreds of the best baristas from around the world. And when they return, they bring this knowledge to the market.
“For them, it means huge development. For us, as consumers, it’s a new quality,” Sereda told the Kyiv Post.
Silky coffee
It’s now hard to surprise Kyiv residents with exceptional service, original concepts and alternative coffee brewing methods like Chemex, AeroPress, cezve and V60.
In order to withstand the fierce competition, cafes need to have the whole package along with some icing on the cake. It’s no surprise that many fail to achieve that. And although the market continues to grow, dozens of cafes shut down every year in Kyiv.
Those that manage to stand out, however, often grow fast and are much loved by locals.
One Love Coffee, which has four locations, is known for its artsy approach and the number of books on its shelves. In 2019, it was listed as one of the world’s top 30 cafes by the tourist publication Big 7 Travel.
Bimbo Coffee and More, despite being a bit distant from the city center, attracts customers by welcoming freelancers with a darkish, comfy design and panoramic windows.
Another now legendary spot is Takava Coffee-Buffet, which grew into a four-piece chain since launching in 2017.
The company roasts its own beans and often rotates varieties, co-founder Bekir Suleimanov says. When they buy a new cultivar from a Ukrainian supplier, they make sure to buy out the whole lot in order to give customers an exclusive taste experience that can’t be found elsewhere.
Takava’s most popular cafe, located on Bessarabska Square, serves over 500 cups of coffee daily. And most of them are made with the most expensive coffee machine in Ukraine – the U.S.-produced Synesso, known for its exceptional quality.
Suleimanov says that the machine not only impressively affects the taste of the drinks but also motivates baristas who have an exclusive opportunity to work using the highest-quality equipment. The staff’s enthusiasm brings a special energy to the place and the guests feel it, Suleimanov says.
“We don’t look at it through the prism of trivial math,” Suleimanov told the Kyiv Post.
Takava is dedicated to promoting alternative drinks and, according to Suleimanov, the demand for alternative preparations has grown among locals: Since 2017, their share of Takava’s sales grew from 10% to 40%.
However, the company’s co-owner notes that they make coffee classics, like the absolute leader and globally trendy cappuccino, with as much pleasure as their unconventional offerings. And in that case, they make sure the drink is smooth and well-blended. When they reach that result, Takava’s baristas call their drinks “tender and silky.’
Takava shouldn’t fight the cappuccino trend, Suleimanov says. “We should cherish it and make it better than anyone else.
Babych believes that Kyiv already makes coffee better than many other cities that have been developing the industry for much longer.
The star barista, who travels around the world quite a lot and even did a European tour to taste coffee all over the region, says that he finds it hard to come across coffee as good abroad as it is in Kyiv. The high quality also comes with lower prices than abroad – depending on a kind and size a cup costs $1-4.
The secret is in the Ukrainians’ passionate, almost unhealthy approach, Babych says.
“One café opened – 10,000 followed in response – and they all do it well because otherwise you will get shut down,” he says.
