How Kalve Coffee is brewing for the Baltics

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While not immediately top of mind when it comes to specialty coffee innovation, Latvia is a leading light in the coffee renaissance that is sweeping the Baltics. Having established itself as a food heritage destination over the last decade – the capital city Riga was named a European Region of Gastronomy in 2017 – Latvia is also now home to a growing number of stand-out specialty coffee businesses.

Primarily operating in Riga, home to approximately a third of Latvia’s 1.8 million citizens, roasters such as Kalve Coffee, Rocket Bean Roastery, Andrito Coffee Roastery and Stars Coffee are flying the flag for the country’s burgeoning specialty coffee community.

Founded in 2017 with a focus on ethical trade, supply chain transparency and craft, Kalve became the first Latvian company to attain B Corp certification in June 2023, scoring an impressive 91.8. The business also received the Latvian Sustainable Management Award from the Bank of Latvia in the following December.

Kalve’s 7,500sq ft roastery in Jaunmārupe is the largest specialty coffee roastery in the Baltics, with capacity to produce 60,000kg of high-quality beans per month. The site ships direct-to-consumers and Horeca clients across Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Germany, while also supplying Kalve’s own bakery and five cafés.

The specialty coffee roaster’s turnover increased by more than 600% between 2019-2023, reaching a record €2.5m ($2.7m) in 2023 and €1.5m ($1.6m) across the first six months of 2024. In December 2023, Kalve raised €1.16m ($1.2m) in an initial public offering (IPO) to facilitate international outlet growth and further expand production.

Kalve’s commercial success is evidence of the growing specialty coffee movement in Latvia, which Cofounder Raimonds Selga has made his mission to incubate.

“We founded Kalve to solve a lack of specialty coffee availability in Latvia and to create a coffee experience that served the transition from commercial to higher-value coffees,” he says.
 

“Sustainability in its most transparent form has always been in our DNA”

Selga began working in the coffee industry in 2013 as Sales & Development Manager for King Coffee Service, now part of Riga-based Rocket Bean Roastery, before founding Kalve Coffee alongside business partner Gatis Zemanis. A certified World Barista Championship judge and Coffee Quality Institute-qualified Q Arabica grader, Selga has since propelled Kalve into one of Europe’s leading specialty coffee groups.

Alongside putting specialty coffee on the map in Latvia, Kalve is also a regional pioneer for sustainability and transparency. With a goal to be carbon negative by 2028, the business publishes annual performance reports revealing data on everything from taxes paid and workforce diversity to coffee sourcing and waste management.

In making a public commitment to planet over profit, Kalve joins a wider movement within the global coffee industry in which first-class customer service is underpinned by a values-first approach.

“We offer an honest and transparent price-to-quality ratio and justify any price increase by adhering to this belief. Customers trust our brand, so we face the challenges of rising costs and constrained consumer spend together,” Selga comments.

Kalve Coffee co-founder Raimonds Selga (left) and the exterior of Kalve Coffee’s Espresso Room Nr.2 in Riga (right)

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A green machine

From its inception Kalve already ticked many of the boxes for B Corp certification and in 2023 joined a group of distinguished coffee businesses globally, including the UK’s Origin Coffee, US-based Counter Culture Coffee and New Zealand headquartered Ozone Coffee Roasters, to be certified by non-profit B Lab. “For us, B Corp was never the destination, as sustainability in its most transparent form has always been in our DNA,” Selga says.

According to the specialty coffee roaster’s 2022/2023 Impact Report, 54% of its coffee is packaged using fully recyclable materials, 26% is zero waste and 20% is produced in refillable tins. Additionally, Kalve reports that nearly 50% of all milk-based beverages ordered across its cafés in 2023 were served with Sproud peamilk – a dairy alternative brand with the lowest climate impact according to Gothenburg-based Carbon Accounting Platform CarbonCloud.

“If there is an option to choose between the less sustainable and more sustainable option – if it makes sense and is backed by facts – we will always go for the latter,” Selga comments.

While Kalve may be a local sustainability pioneer, Selga believes the wider Latvian market has a long way to go when it comes to prioritising genuine environmental, social and economic sustainability.

“I think every company now has some form of sustainability practices, but a lot of it is just fluff in my opinion. I struggle with companies that promote sustainable practices but in the meantime mistreat their staff.

Or if they recycle their packaging but swap suppliers based on price, not relationship and transparency,” he says.

Cultivating coffee relationships

While Kalve currently sources coffee from Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mexico, 76% comes from Brazil. The specialty coffee roaster says it carefully evaluates the environmental and social aspects it can influence through procurement and only works with growers and suppliers who incorporate nature conservation into coffee cultivation.
 

“We face the challenges of rising costs and constrained consumer spend together”

Kalve has worked with fellow B Corp Sancoffee since 2021 and imports over 57,000kgs of coffee from the Brazilian specialty coffee cooperative each year. The Minas Gerais-based business sources coffee from 400 Brazilian farms, achieved carbon neutrality in 2020 and is known for its commitment to positive social impact and biodiversity projects.

Sancoffee, which also counts Germany’s Bonanza Coffee Roasters, Australia’s Campos Coffee and South Korea’s Terarosa Coffee among its specialty coffee partners, has identified nearly 16,000 hectares of local land negatively impacted by improper agriculture or extreme weather conditions. To date, the cooperative has restored over 20 hectares by planting native plants, such as bamboo, wild yam, and other local species – an initiative Selga witnessed firsthand during a visit in September 2023.

“We believe that exchange trips are crucial, not only to see where and how the coffee we serve to our guests and partners grows but also to understand the impact of our choices in the region and the benefits they bring to local residents and the environment,” Selga says.

Kalve’s 7,500sq ft roastery in Jaunmārupe, which produces 60,000kg of specialty coffee every month | Photo credit: Kalve Coffee

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To the Baltics and beyond

Kalve’s IPO raise, which exceeded its target by 16%, will enable the business to optimise production processes and expand roasting capacity at its Jaunmārupe facility. It also sets the stage for international expansion.

The coffee roaster opened a Brew coffee shop concept with local partners in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 2023 and has outlined plans to open six new company-operated stores across Estonia and Lithuania in 2025 before expanding beyond the Baltics from 2026.

Riga is strategically located at the centre of the Baltics region, enabling Selga and Zemanis to oversee expansion north and south into Estonia and Lithuania from Kalve’s headquarters.

However, the planned evolution of the business is also being orchestrated by more values-driven reasoning, with Selga confident Kalve can fill a gap in the market for a sustainability focused, specialty coffee concept in key cities, such as Tallinn and Vilnius, without over-crowding the market.

“We’ve managed to create Kalve into a brand that is appreciated by locals independently of where they are based. Just as we’ve created a network of cafés in Riga whilst avoiding internal competition, we believe it can be done in other cities too,” he says.

Kalve believes that opening cafès in neighbouring countries will grow the overall specialty coffee scene in the Baltics, contributing to a burgeoning regional specialty coffee market which also includes fellow pioneers such as Estonia’s Paper Mill Coffee and Lithuania’s Huracán Coffee.

With an intrinsic belief in value-driven decision-making and transparent operations, Kalve’s growth both at home and abroad is yet further evidence of the Baltic’s ascent to the highest echelons of the specialty coffee world.
 

This article was first published in Issue 23 of 5THWAVE magazine.

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