From Beans to Bikes: How We Ended Up Running a Coffee Stand in Tokyo
As a local from Seattle with years of barista experience, I thought I had left that world behind. When I moved to Japan, I struggled to find good coffee — a lot of it was dark roast and much heavier than I was used to. I was used to second and third-wave coffee. After I met my husband, he introduced me to a couple of local places with good coffee, but we still struggled to find good specialty coffee. One day, I casually asked him if he had any dreams he wanted to try, but never had the guts to. His reply? “Roast coffee!” He then explained how he had found a small home-use machine, so I said, “Why not?!” And that’s how things got started.
Before this, I had an image of coffee roasters as being (mostly) all men, leasing these big expensive machines and not telling anyone about how to roast — it’s a highly kept secret back home. Not very beginner-friendly. But once we bought that little machine, we never looked back.
Our Background
As I mentioned, I was a barista for many years, making my way up to assistant manager, running training, going to business conventions and making the buying decisions, but I got burnt out and quit. I studied linguistics originally, so I wanted to use my degree. On the other hand, my husband had no experience in a cafe. He’d worked odd jobs from the fashion industry to blue-collar and even IT. He’d also lived abroad in Indonesia, so he’s a bit of an outsider in that way here in Japan. He didn’t want to work at one company his entire life, so he tried his hand at different things.
Our First Steps
After we started roasting, we learned mostly by trial and error. There are a lot of roasting techniques to know — for example, we learned to let the beans rest a few days so they could age properly. We had made the mistake of throwing out some of our first batches too early. And, we taught ourselves how to hand-pick to get rid of defective beans. This is probably what took the longest because there was no one to learn from. We set aside some defective beans and even drank a batch to see if we were within the mark— it was beyond terrible and an experience to remember! As we got better at roasting, we started playing with different roasting profiles and trying out new beans, trying to make the best specialty coffee we could.
The Struggle
We worked hard and opened a small shop in Kobe, but this was still during the pandemic and not only did we have few customers, the owner would come to complain to us daily that we needed to follow more traditional Japanese coffee culture. This meant, stop doing artisanal coffee and serve Japanese-style dark roast coffee while allowing people to smoke in our shop. Things eventually came to a head and we ended up closing the shop. But we didn’t want to give up on coffee altogether and continued selling our beans online.
The Next Adventure
After trying out a few other odd jobs (guiding tours of Osaka, teaching at local English schools, etc.), we started to talk about relocating. For us, something about living in. Kobe didn’t feel right, and we knew our next steps would take us somewhere new. We randomly took a Golden Week vacation to Tokyo (our first time) and things suddenly clicked. People were more friendly and open-minded, and there was more specialty coffee. This was it! This was our new home!
After the Move
When we moved to just outside of Shinjuku, Tokyo, I continued to teach Business English online and my husband was planning to take a couple of months off to study English and think about our next steps. The urban coffee scene here was great, and after we got settled into our tiny new apartment, we roasted a full batch of all our beans as a nice welcome present to ourselves. Setting them aside to rest for a bit, we got to know the local cycling community and made friends with a local independent bicycle shop owner. We shared our background and explained that our business name is “Liminal” because we want to be open to diverse communities. He said he felt the same and asked us if we had plans for the next day — he was doing a pop-up event and needed some coffee.
From there, we collaborated and now have a little coffee stand inside the bicycle shop. Coffee and bike culture in the West tend to go hand in hand, but here, we’ve gotten to know more locals and built a great community. We’ve even gone together on group rides through the city. There’s nothing better than coffee plus something, and watching our customers make new friends and talk bikes over a cup of our coffee has been the most rewarding experience.
How We’ve Grown
We’ve come a long way from our little shop in Kobe to being located right outside Shinjuku. Tokyo is more vibrant and alive and people are more interested in specialty coffee and community, so our business is doing well and we’re finally feeling like we belong. We have also had the chance to incorporate more varieties of beans because the people in Tokyo are not only used to specialty coffee but seek out new experiences more often. We’ve already built a great group of friends and new members keep popping up.
Our Future
We’re hoping to one day expand to a bigger roastery space where we can hold events, workshops, etc., but we want to do this while working with our friends at the bike shop. If we ended up doing only coffee, it just wouldn’t be enough to satisfy our hearts — it’s all about the community and that’s something we’re not willing to let go of.
So, if you’re in the Shinjuku area, stop by and say hi, we’d love to make a new friend!
If you have experience opening your own shop or know any local places you’d like to recommend, leave a comment below so we can grow a community together here too!
