The Story
Casino Mocca was founded in 2013 in Budapest by Lajos Horváth, Zoltán Kis, and Szabolcs Temesvári — three people with a history of competing in the World Barista Championships who had grown frustrated by the absence of the quality they were chasing anywhere they could source locally.
The company became Hungary’s first specialty roastery to apply what Zoltán describes as an “engineering mindset” to coffee: a rigorous, systems-based approach to quality control that treats green coffee evaluation and roasting development as problems to be solved analytically rather than intuitively. This approach made Casino Mocca an outlier in its home market and eventually made it known across Europe, where their coffees circulate through specialty importers and subscription services.
Casino Mocca does not operate its own café in Budapest. They supply their roasted coffee to cafes in Hungary and partner with specialty accounts across Europe, keeping the operation lean and focused on roasting quality rather than retail expansion.
Sourcing & Relationships
The sourcing process at Casino Mocca is intensive: coffees are evaluated exhaustively before purchase, with quality standards calibrated against what the founders learned competing internationally. They work with East African origins — particularly Ethiopia and Kenya — alongside Central American lots, and the catalogue reflects a commitment to buying only what scores well under their own evaluation criteria.
The wholesale-only model means there is no retail customer base to accommodate with accessible crowd-pleaser coffees. The quality floor can stay high.
Roasting Philosophy
The engineering mindset extends to roasting: Casino Mocca uses a Probat roaster and treats every roast as a data-generating event, tracking variables carefully and iterating toward profiles that maximize quality for each specific lot. This isn’t artisan intuition — it’s a process designed to produce repeatable, high-quality results across batches.
The house style skews toward brightness and clarity, with filter and espresso lots roasted to distinct specifications rather than applying a single profile across both.
What to Try
The seasonal single-origin filter lots from Ethiopia and Kenya represent the core of what Casino Mocca does — sources that reward light-roast profiles and analytical precision. Their espresso offerings apply the same standards to a different method. Keep an eye on their European stockists if you’re outside Hungary, as the coffee travels well and is worth seeking out.