Tokyo’s coffee scene is the stuff of legend, not to mention dozens of Sprudge features across the last 15 years and counting. Today we’re checking a new coffee bar in the heart of Tokyo, delivering eye-catching design and serious coffee chops. This is PostCoffee in Shimokitazawa.
The 2024 Build-Outs of Coffee is presented by Ceado and Dona. The 2024 Build-outs of Coffee is sponsored by Pacific Barista Series, La Marzocco, Acaia and Ghirardelli.
As told to Sprudge by Pauline Daïd-Poisot.
For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?
We’re a big specialty coffee start-up in Japan, offering a subscription-based nationwide service, with also an online platform to buy original products, our own roasted coffee beans, and of a selection of over 31 partners (25 roaster partners from Japan and about six international partner roasters).
Can you tell us a bit about the new space?
We’ve decided to divide our HQ office in half and open a concept store/cafe in the eclectic and fun district of Tokyo called Shimokitazawa. This is a place of culture where young people love to meet (lot of traditional coffeehouses, thrifts shops, day market, and music events). The vision for our cafe/concept-store is reflecting the vision of the company; a place to chill and experience a wide variety of coffees, regardless where you’re currently at in your coffee journey. We offer only specialty grade coffee and decaf. Staff speaks both Japanese and English. Since this is part of our office, you can spot unusual things such as our CEO’s pull-up bar on the ceiling (comes early for iced coffee and exercise), gear that appealed to staff (Weber grinder, Kees van der Westen Speedster espresso machine, Supreme Moccamaster, our original neon dripper V60SP….). We opened officially on the International Coffee Day on October 1st, 2023 but had a renewal in March, so we now have outside bench, table, huge sticker on window, and new merch. It’s a space where you can come freely to speak coffee with staff, smell some to check out, work using our wifi ,or just take a latte to-go in the middle of your shopping day.
What’s your approach to coffee?
We offer our in-house roasted coffees with Loring; since we are also a subscription service, we make sure our lineup covers from light~medium~dark roasts, as well as have seasonal blends, specialty decaf, and variety of processes. We also display the coffees we buy from our 25 Japanese partner roasters. Since we are keen on keeping it delicious and adapt to local expectations, all coffees displayed were roasted at least less than three weeks ago. We want people with a beginner level in specialty coffee just as professionals to find something fun for them to try out/smell/discuss about when entering our offline store.
Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?
Yes! The one I like the most personally would be our neon dripper V60SP, an exclusive PostCoffee (made by Hario Japan), in seven colors. Staff use the color they like best on the day depending on their mood. For espresso, we have the Speedster; for the background story, our CEO (Ryo Shimomura) previously bought and imported it for his own home use before realizing it was rare in Japan and many coffee people asked him to see it, so he opened his first cafe and then later founded the start-up “PostCoffee”. We still use it to this day, especially for iced americanos quite popular in Asia. For scales, we have Hario and Acaia. For grinders, we have a Weber, Mahlkönig… We have also AeroPress of course, a Supreme Moccamaster we use more for staff. We are coffee geeks, so whenever we find something attractive we get it.
How is your project considering sustainability?
We have at heart on working on this point and we started doing direct trade from last year with El Salvador. We are working with Royal Coffee on a direct trade project in Ethiopia. We also work with partners who have at heart to work on sustainability. For our in-house roasted coffee, we roast daily and send right away, to make sure to have no loss and not over roast.
What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?
We just opened back in March 2024 :)
Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?
Our CEO and his brother who is COO also of the company from a very creative background and did studies in design. They are extremely motivated and creative people, so they build everything from scratch and crafted every thing they possibly could (our booth last year at SCAJ, our benches and tables at the cafe, the window stickers and menu cart etc…).
Thank you!
Cheers!
The 2024 Build-Outs of Coffee is presented by Ceado and Dona. The 2024 Build-outs of Coffee is sponsored by Pacific Barista Series, La Marzocco, Acaia and Ghirardelli.
