Pleasantly incongruous to Wedding’s staunch social housing complexes bedecked in graffiti and the scrolling LED signs of 24-hour kiosks, Coffee Circle’s flagship café is a sanctum of muted colors and comforting design details. Inside the quiet inner courtyard of a historic brick-and-stone structure from 1905, typical of Berlin’s industrial architecture, the brand’s first foray into the offline world of coffee was the realization of a longtime dream, as well as an experiment. “Coffee Circle was an online brand and we didn’t have an offline identity, so this gave us a lot of freedom to explore,” says Ersin Koray, the company’s Head of Retail, “we created this café with our new vision, which then influenced and inspired the online brand, so that we changed it almost completely.”
Founded in 2010 as an online coffee brand with a deep focus on social projects, Coffee Circle was awarded the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Sustainability Award in 2022 for its biodiversity project in Ethiopia. Its Wedding location is also home to its own roastery, which opened in 2016, effectively altering its surroundings through the fragrance of freshly roasted coffee, sourced fairly and with positive impact. Located in a neighborhood on the brink of change, the company’s first café is one of the few representatives of a new wave of young creatives that have made Wedding their new base, sipping their Coffee Circle espresso shots from Brazilian Cerrado or a batch brew from Ethiopian Limu.
Just a few steps away, past the döner joints around Netellbeckplatz, the Michelin-starred Ernst hides behind an unassuming façade. It is here that a reservation is hard to come by to taste chef Dylan Watson-Brawn’s life-altering dishes inspired thoroughly by his formative years spent in Japan. Across the street, Ernst’s sister venue Julius is a more casual endeavor, even open during the day for a cup of coffee roasted in-house over a fire and brewed by hand for each order. Inside a former crematorium, another important piece of Wedding’s new outlook is the Silent Green Cultural Quarter, with its own café and a full roster of events.
Contrary to its Wedding haunt, Coffee Circle’s café in Mitte is a bit more confluent with the stylish ethos of its second location. Close to the iconic Babylon Cinema, designed by Hans Poelzig in the 1920s, and the equally iconic Volksbühne theater, the Mitte branch’s chic interior includes marble floors and a floral installation by the masterflorist Carolin Ruggaber. “Mitte is international, it gives you recognition in the tourist guides and the international coffee community,” says Koray, “there is competition in the area so this was an experiment to see how strong the brand is and how much of an attraction we can create.” Located on a quieter thoroughfare, away from the busier central shopping streets, Coffee Circle Mitte’s neighbors include Lubian, a fine paper and stationary boutique, and Remi, a contemporary eatery with a seasonal and regional outlook from the chefs of the well-known Lode & Stijn in Kreuzberg.
Far away from the international crowd, Coffee Circle’s third branch is its most humble, a small café on a quiet street in the residential Bergmannkiez, where other coffee spots such as Chapter One and Two Trick Pony are frequented by young families, their strollers in tow. Original tile work in a forest green decorates the floors of the kiosk-like Coffee Circle Bergmannkiez, where locals often stop by for a quick cup of coffee or to purchase coffee beans that they can brew at home. In fact, if there is one element that unites all of Coffee Circle’s cafes, which seem to exhibit small differences inspired by their locations, it is this shelf exhibiting their iconic color-coded coffee bags. A visual reminder of the brand’s inception as an online store, a dedication to ending economic inequality in the coffee farming industry and a passion for bringing the most intricate of roasts from the remotest of locations.
Drift Mag, Volume 13: Berlin
Feride Yalav-Heckeroth 