Spend time in any of Germany’s big cities and you’ll come to a sad realisation – the local coffee culture is pretty stale. Wandering the streets of Berlin or Frankfurt, you’re often forced to choose between burnt drippings from a chain bakery or the overpriced and underwhelming offerings of a pricey café. Great spots exist, sure, but for those of us used to vibrant coffee cities like Cape Town, Melbourne, or Amsterdam, it’s a far cry from what we know and love.
But if you believe the hype, LAP (Life Among People) may be about to disrupt Germany’s lacklustre coffee market. Founded in 2022 by Ralph Hage and Tonalli Arreola, this Berlin-based startup offers affordable, good quality to-go coffee to a growing customer base of loyal urbanites. Tiny retail spaces, menu simplification, process automation, and supply chain optimisation have helped LAP to compete with Berlin’s thousands of bakeries and convenience stores, as well as established rivals like McDonald’s.1
LAP fascinates me for the same reason that Plato, South Africa’s own coffee wunderkind, does – their playbook comes straight out of Silicon Valley. Both LAP and Plato are traditional hospitality businesses in a very real sense – they sell coffee by the cup in brick-and-mortar stores. But there’s a big difference between them any their competitors. Like AirBnB or Uber, their goal is simple: to grow big and to grow fast. While they may exist in a very traditional market, they operate more like tech startups.
As Paul Graham once wrote, everything a startup does follows from its obsessive focus on growth. First, build a product with a big market. To go coffee? Done. Second, create a business model that can scale very big, very quickly. LAP seems to have done that, upending the traditional to-go coffee model with greater automation and optimisation, smaller retail spaces, and intentionally building a loyal following via social media and IRL events. Plato, a similar but distinct outfit from South Africa, is pursuing a similar strategy.
Backed by VC firms like HV Capital and FoodLabs, and led by founders with startup experience, it’s no surprise LAP is pursuing such an aggressive Silicon Valley-esque growth strategy. In a little over two years, LAP has grown to over a dozen locations across Berlin and has now expanded into Hamburg and Munich. Provided the model they’ve developed works, I don’t see it being too hard to continue copy-pasting across Germany. As is so often the case in Europe’s largest economy, the market is wide open for innovation.
I’ve yet to try LAP myself but will definitely be heading over once their wave of expansions hits Frankfurt. I have high hopes, though I secretly doubt it’ll hit the spot quite as well as a creamy cappuccino brewed in view of Table Mountain The only concern, at the end of the day, is this: Growing big quickly requires an even bigger pile of cash. Will LAP reach a profitable scale before their runway ends? For the sake of decent coffee, I very much hope they do.