All at once, and seemingly out of nowhere, Berlin is awash with indigo blue. Specifically, indigo blue cups – spilling out of orange bins, strewn in gutters, bobbing through crowds in the hands of passersby. Not since the Olsen Twins began concealing themselves from paparazzi behind Starbucks lattes in the aughts has the status symbol of a coffee cup held a population so captive.
Berlin brand LAP Coffee has seen epidemic-like spread in the capital in the last year. In the less than two years since its founding in September 2023, LAP has opened 15 locations in Berlin and four in Munich, and is planning a Hamburg expansion. They offer specialty coffee – everything from a humble americano to protein brew to blueberry matchas laced with collagen shots – at competitive prices. And with cappuccinos sold at €2.50, they seem to be offering what many other cafés cannot: prices reminiscent of a time when Berlin was more liveable.
LAP Coffee has seen epidemic-like spread in the capital in the last year
The model for LAP – which stands for “Life Among People” – is, however, imported from New York. The city’s Blank Street Coffee chain exploded a few years ago, with the New York Times calling the automated-espresso vendor “suddenly inescapable”, and is now valued at $500 million. LAP’s founders – foodtech veterans Ralph Hage and Tonalli Arreola – have borrowed from this model the use of expensive, fully automated machines that can produce coffee at the touch of a button without need for traditional barista training or techniques. LAP uses quality beans, roasted by Berlin-based specialty roaster 19grams – but beans are only one component in what defines coffee as “specialty”; at LAP, the word alludes more to their range of Instagram-friendly offerings that photograph well. The only manual part of their process is steaming the milk, as the machines sometimes struggle to switch between dairy substitutes. This automation, via the coffee machines or ordering in-app or through QR codes, translates to an ability to produce high quantities with dramatically reduced labour costs – a critical factor behind LAP’s competitive prices.
Costs (and staff size) are also kept low by opening micro-outlets, which eliminates the need for utilities legally required for larger coffee houses, such as dishwashers (all coffee is served in to-go cups), toilets, or ovens to bake or reheat pastries (in Berlin, theirs are from Le Brot). The disruptive model is quickly scalable, which – alongside savvy guerilla marketing campaigns, a strong social media presence and brand collaborations – has attracted LAP sizable investment in the form of venture capital. Heavyweight firms like FoodLabs, Roundtable, HV Capital – which has invested in the likes of Flixbus, HelloFresh, SumUp, Urban Sports Club and Zalando – and Insight Partners, which has also bought into Vinted, Shopify and Fanatics, own significant percentages of the company.
On the LAP website, the company says that they’re “creating small spaces where everyone can enjoy Life Among People. The stuff that adds colour to life, fuelling our curiosity and creativity.” (Notably absent from this mission statement is the word “coffee”; notably present the vague umbrella term “stuff”.) LAP locations all have signature blue accents, large mirrors, some gestural seating – designed for quick stops, not long stays. There’s an overall industrial vibe that’s synonymous with our algorithm-driven age. It’s a step away from the concept of a “third place”, which was the selling point of coffeehouse culture in the 90s; less life among people than Latte Access Point.
In April, the electronic currency service Wise put the average cost of a cappuccino in Berlin at €3.65, and cost of living data from Statistik Berlin-Brandenberg reports that the price of coffee has risen 17.5% in the last four years. But LAP is doing more than attempting to serve Berlin’s cheapest, most convenient cup of joe. They are, in essence, marketing a lifestyle. The brand has collaborated with sneaker boutique Solebox, hosted a “Chemistry Cafe” with Bumble (“hope you found your perfect Match-a”), popped up at Uniqlo, and held group yoga classes. They’ve worked with Lululemon, New Balance and Highsnobiety. In October 2024, someone tried to sell a LAP-branded cap on Kleinanzeigan for €300. Their social media is awash with chic Berliners in statement sunglasses and their version of Yves Klein Blue. In August, they instituted a “Bring Your Own Cup” policy and encouraged people to “bring a mug, bring a shoe, bring a fish, bring a bowl” to any LAP location to get 15% off their drink. The promotional post on Instagram showed items full of enticing iced coffee, and added that buckets were also welcome. In a comment, one caffeine lover wrote, “Lol, the last time I tried, the barista claimed she can’t fill up my cup because she was afraid it was going to exceed the amount she’d normally pour into a paper cup.”
Latte As Performance
Whether LAP’s approach is creating genuine community, or simply performing it while slowly strangling the market, is a matter of who you ask. In July, LAP opened a new location on on Falkensteinstraße in Wrangelkeiz, a block away from local queer-owned coffee shop The Boat Kaffee. Annie Cook, who has co-owned the shop alongside her wife, Thea Raifer, since 2017, greets people by name when they walk in. Cook tells me there are many lifelong residents in the area, and the couple have made efforts to establish themselves as good neighbours – looking after sets of keys, helping water plants when people go away, offering free sodas or some company for those who need it. One of their youngest regulars is the same age as the shop, and the couple took some supportive pride in seeing her start school a couple of years ago.
Cook has her own view of what she sells. “Coffee is such a treat, but it is also something you could very easily not treat yourself to. You can make it at home, you can buy decent coffee, you can buy a decent machine – a one-time investment – and have, every day, a standard of quality that you like,” she says. “So you have to really offer something for people to want to come every day, whether it be good chats, great coffee, good prices, that kind of thing. You have to take that all into consideration when you make your calculations.”
Outside the Falkensteinstraße LAP, most customers told The Berliner that they were there because the coffee was cheap and conveniently located. Others had been pulled in by their active – sometimes aggressive – presence online. “I live here, I saw it open a couple of weeks ago and I’ve heard a lot about it. My TikTok is full of this stuff, so I really wanted to try it out. I’ve been here five or six times since because it’s on my way to work and the coffee is pretty good and cheap,” says Merlin, 30. He isn’t a LAP loyalist, he explains – he will still go to the coffee shop next door for his hot caffeine (the automated machines don’t make drinks warm enough for his liking), but he likes LAP for his iced beverages. His dual-patronage might not be typical, though. “That café [next door] opened, I would say, half a year ago. And you can already see people that would usually go there, going [to LAP],” he says.
Understanding LAP’s strategy in Berlin means looking at not just what kind of spaces LAP is opening, but also where they are opening them. “In Your Kiez” is a central tenet of their branding, though their locations in Berlin are mostly concentrated on trendy areas, including many stores in bougie Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. Their community offerings skew towards stick-and-poke pop-ups, pre-work sober raves, vintage shop stands. These “activations” seem like obvious nods to the countercultural heartbeat that has historically underpinned Berlin – but LAP’s low prices also undercut businesses in the neighbourhood, while their branding associates them with the pre-existing culture that such independent cafés helped to build.
Thus far, the Wrangelkiez location has a 3.6 rating on Google. While many customers were happy with the price point and the service, the quality of the coffee and the intention of LAP as a business is a recurring comment. “Oh God, we don’t need another one of these stores in Kreuzberg too, that treat coffee as if it were a tech company. It’s just no better than McDonald’s, but they disguise it with better marketing,” wrote Lucía Perez. Another wrote: “Tasteless interior, only to go cups are offered. Coffee isn‘t made well. There is a great local café just a few shops further. Maybe consider taking your money there instead of contributing to gentrification ar [sic] the expense of small businesses.”
This is a characterisation that LAP CEO Ralph Hage takes issue with. “We’re a local operator sometimes mistaken for the enemy; we aren’t. We’re here to strengthen communities and support neighbourhoods,” Hage told The Berliner. “It is disheartening to be cast as a predator; in a city with thousands of cafés – there [are] 2,270 cafés in Berlin vs 1,200 [Späti], our shops represent 0.5% of the market, and our aim is to expand it by bringing in people who rarely buy coffee out or can’t spend €3.50 every day – complementing rather than crowding out independents. We’re not ‘reshaping the scene’ at any scale, and claims to the contrary overstate our impact.”
Illustrations by Csaba Klement
Lifestyle Automation Project
The question of LAP’s impact has generated media buzz in recent months, with articles from local media outlining the pressure on independent cafés amid LAP’s aggressive growth. Hage says that LAP is designed to respond to the fact that the majority of coffee order in Germany is zum Mitnehmen, citing national data in support of his model. “Germany drinks coffee on the move. Roughly seven in ten cups are to-go – in a franchise-heavy market where McDonald’s is among the largest coffee sellers. We are not a chain; we built LAP to bridge the gap between overpriced chains and low-quality street coffee with specialty-level cups at fair prices, right where people are,” Hage says. But it’s worth noting that of LAP’s 17 locations, only four are within walking distance of a Starbucks – and those Starbucks are tucked away in shopping arcades. LAP’s choice of locations seems nowhere near the market they claim to target. It’s possible that if LAP did open in busy shopping or office districts – if they were available at Hauptbahnhof – their brand would receive less pushback.
In penny-pinched times, it’s not hard to understand the appeal of somewhere like LAP
When asked how they choose where to open the next LAP, Hage says they “look for gaps, not saturation. Often previously vacant micro-sites that big cafés can’t use. And we open only where demand is clear and unit economics stand on their own.” He says they “build in and for the neighbourhood, we hire locally, invite neighbours for free coffee, run reusable-cup incentives, and give walls and airtime to local artists; the goal is simple: be a good neighbour and add light.” This seems like a good representation of “life among people” – until you consider that the grab-and-go LAP shops aren’t designed for hanging out. Hage has an answer for this, too. “To meet [the] daily flow we designed small, quick spaces: perches and a few seats for short stops, because belonging can happen in 60 seconds: eye contact, a name, a fair price.”
Effective advertising can also happen in 60 seconds – specifically, on social media. In a post-pandemic, increasingly-online world, LAP’s form of marketing-as-community-building is best consumed in chatty TikToks. But that reliance on social media to create community can allow for a subtle rewriting of reality. In LAP’s “morning in Kotti” TikTok, a video made for the launch of their Adalbertstraße location, the social media manager and a friend take their audience on a tour of the neighbourhood. In the video, the duo (supposedly) stumble out of Paloma Bar after a night of partying, then head to LAP for a pistachio croissant and caffeinated beverages before going on to visit Kreuzberg institutions such as Turkish food spot Hasir, the “vibrant markets”, and a final stop in the Kotti Fotoautomat – because no morning in Kreuzberg is “complete” without it. The purpose of the video is to establish the new LAP as a natural extension of the neighbourhood – but the result is a jarring cognitive disconnect. Anyone acquainted with the Kotti Fotoautomat will know that it is typically occupied by people struggling with active addictions looking for a concealed spot to use drugs. But in LAP’s world, that reality is conveniently filtered away.
Still, there’s an aspirational quality to LAP’s online presence that is clearly working for many of LAP’s customers – and it is successful with staff too. Jenny* was a customer at LAP before she became a barista; she likes the brand and finds it personal. “I prefer the image, the fact that LAP is life among people. And the indigo blue and the bright stores,” she says. “I’ve tried to get a barista job before and been told that I need two years of experience in latte art. But I’m very young, if I don’t have the training, how can I get it?”
The difficult job market was cited by several of the company’s baristas who spoke to The Berliner. Tom* decided to work for LAP after bad experiences working for smaller, independent businesses, including a request to an employer for breaks at a regular time and punctual payment that was met with the response to “find less stressful work elsewhere”. Flush with venture capital, LAP offers the relative security and perks of flexible, contracted work for a bigger corporation. There are low barriers to entry: automation means that people like Jenny don’t need much training and can see a quick progression through the ranks to becoming a store manager.
There are, however, downsides to working in micro-retail. “There is a bigger turnover or more of an emphasis on being quick and sales, which you might not find in smaller businesses … this push where everything is a number and a formula,” says Tom. “But I guess that’s how they keep their prices affordable.”
Less Area Pride
Despite everything LAP seems to be prioritising – or performing – for Berliners, Hage wants the focus, and the company’s growth, to be on the customers. “In the end, judge us by what happens on the street: fair prices, consistent coffee, and human hospitality – and if we misstep, tell us; we listen and adjust. Our customers are our prime source of feedback, they shape our menu, our stores and our story,” he says.
In penny-pinched times, it’s not hard to understand the appeal of somewhere like LAP for those customers: the promise of accessible luxury, of feeling like a local even if you’re a newer transplant, is an alluring one, as is the €2.50 cappuccino. But those low costs may be someone else’s downfall, as independent places can’t afford to compete with the prices or LAP’s ability to weather rent increases. “What’s Berlin going to look like when opening a business is prohibitively expensive, cumbersome, you’re never secure… it’s so depressing,” says Cook. “It makes for a Berlin that looks a lot different than the one I have lived in.”
*Names have been changed or shortened to protect privacy
