The Story
The Barn began in 2010 in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel in Mitte when founder Ralf Rueller discovered his passion for coffee and opened his first café.
Ralf had returned to Germany after a decade in London working in finance and acting, and was inspired by the quality and freshness of food at Borough market, noticing the lack of proper specialty coffee in the German capital.
In 2010, there were no specialty coffee roasters in Berlin—no high-quality beans, no traceability, no light roasts, only blends rather than single origins.
Two years after opening his first coffee shop, Ralf decided to start roasting, having been “infected by the coffee virus.”
Only a year later, he began thinking about opening his own roastery, and the company has since grown from a single shop in Berlin to nearly a dozen cafés in town and many scattered around the world, from Seoul to Mallorca, passing through Dubai.
Fifteen years later, The Barn has grown into an international brand with 13 cafés in Germany (11 in Berlin, 2 in Munich), along with locations in London, Palma de Mallorca, South Korea, and Dubai.
Sourcing & Relationships
All of The Barn’s farm relationships are personal and they visit regularly, with working in a sustainable way as their priority, including sustainability, no negative environmental impact, preserving pristine forests and wildlife, water recycling, fair treatment of labour, ethical rules and high cup quality.
They believe in long-term relationships and fair pricing, paying for quality with all coffee prices far higher than Fair Trade Pricing.
They make sure farmers get paid exactly what they deserve, which has helped them build lasting relationships all over the world, requiring a minimum of 86 points or more when sourcing their beans.
The Barn builds long-term relationships with farmers and supports them with fair pricing and shared development goals, with their initiative “The Barn Forest” in Brazil seeing over 28,000 trees planted since 2020.
They are committed to plant 40,000 native trees over the next 5 years on 25 hectares of land, with trees planted, managed and nursed by Daterra for at least 10 years, growing on Daterra’s estate where they’re guaranteed to be managed and protected.
They often pay multiple times the Fair Trade price for quality coffees, as it’s the only way to break out of the commodity cycle, offer long-term prospects, and support a sustainable future for their farmers.
Roasting Philosophy
The Barn focuses exclusively on carefully selected single-origin coffees, uncompromisingly roasted to highlight each bean’s terroir.
Their roast style is light, and with years of perfecting their signature roast style, they know how to develop coffee beans from the inside to bring out all taste properties and make each individual coffee lot shine, spending time test-profiling and sample-roasting beans to find out what each coffee tastes like, with the art being not to change a coffee but to roast it carefully so it can impress with everything it has.
They follow specialty coffee principles and constantly push to a higher level, sourcing only from relationship farms and only single origin coffees, pushing quality by roasting coffees light and to perfection, developing individual roast curves to present the personality and characteristics of each coffee and its terroir.
Light roasting is healthier than dark roasting as they don’t burn the outside of the coffee bean, and one advantage is that you can taste everything—good and bad—so they simply use the best beans they can find with no way of hiding lower qualities behind a veil of dark roast.
What to Try
The Barn offers three signature taste categories—Balanced, Terroir, and Exotic—providing clear indication of flavor profiles with vast range within each category.
Their Kenya Gichathaini AA is described as “the best Kenyan coffee we have had all year,” grown in rich red volcanic soil between two mountain ranges in Nyeri, processed by the renowned Gichathaini mill, bursting with notes of ripe red berries, hibiscus tea, and soft caramel, described as “buttery like warm cherry pie, juicy like fresh-picked raspberries, and rich like a gourmet caramel apple.”
Ivan dos Santos from Brazil represents their Brazilian offering from Sitio Seriema farm, a model of modern, responsible coffee production, first tasted by The Barn in 2014 and helping change their perception of Brazilian coffees, with their relationship having grown over years as they’ve started investing in upgrades at the farm.
Their Guatemala Los Naranjales is a medium roast perfect for espresso, offering creamy, rich espresso with hints of chocolate, vanilla, and red orange, from Huehuetenango region at 1750m altitude.
With over 100 single-origin coffees per year, The Barn curates unique, seasonal experiences, including their Low Caf program featuring naturally low-caffeine varietals like Laurina and Aramosa.