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Giraffe Coffee Roasters

Giraffe Coffee Roasters from Rotterdam stands for specialty coffee with transparent origins, strict quality control, signature blends, single origins, and training for home baristas’s and corporate clients.

Giraffe Coffee Roasters Beans

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More About Giraffe Coffee Roasters

Founding and Philosophy
Giraffe Coffee Roasters started in 2013 in Rotterdam. Maarten van der Jagt and Mark Jordaan founded the brand. Maarten, a former food journalist, editor-in-chief of a coffee magazine, and head judge at barista competitions, was searching for an exceptional product. The name Giraffe reflects that ambition. It represents finding the gem of the highest quality coffee in a place where no one else can reach. Today, owners Leslie and Mark lead the company. A diverse team of twelve people, including Yort, Robin, Elseline, and head roaster Skip, drive the business forward. Prior to opening their own coffee bar in 2021, Giraffe had already spent eight successful years supplying bars, hotels, and restaurants.
The roastery approaches specialty coffee as a true craft. They follow strict SCA standards and always score their beans at eighty points or higher. Quality, origin, and transparency in the supply chain are central. Every Wednesday morning, the team holds a blind cupping session. Through this weekly check, they evaluate the coffee and adjust the roast profiles wherever necessary.
Sourcing and Strict Quality Control
The green beans come from top regions in Central and South America, Africa, and Indonesia. Sustainability and fair trade form the foundation of their sourcing model. The roastery is SKAL-certified, allowing them to offer traceable and organic coffee. Giraffe pays farmers a fair price through short, direct lines. They also invest locally in the construction of drying beds and in programs that improve the socio-economic position of women.
The logistics surrounding the unroasted beans are highly precise. The beans are given a double GrainPro packaging. During transport by ship, they travel below deck, far from the heat of the engine. In Netherlands, the beans are stored in a climate-controlled warehouse to protect the quality. Furthermore, their own laboratory tests samples for moisture and uniformity before they commit to a final purchase.
The Roasting Process and Signature Blends
Roasting takes place on a Probat G25 machine. The beans reach temperatures between 180 and 230 degrees Celsius, depending on the desired profile. Single origins are generally roasted lighter to optimally preserve their unique origin character. Giraffe views the blending of coffee as a true culinary technique for creating flavor tension, and emphatically not as a means of cost reduction. The collection currently features seven blend products, with five permanent house blends as the core:

Original Blend: A mix from Brazil and Ethiopia (Yirgacheffe). The flavor is layered, creamy, and sweet with notes of bergamot.
Organic Blend: Consists of 100% organically grown coffee from Peru and Ethiopia. This blend is sweet with hints of milk chocolate, caramel, and toffee.
Pacific Blend: Beans from Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia combine to form an intense, spicy, and powerful profile with notes of liquorice.
Latin America Blend: A balanced blend from Brazil and Nicaragua. The flavor profile is sweet, featuring notes of milk chocolate and caramel.
Bela Vista Blend: Coffee from Brazil and Colombia. This blend is creamy with pronounced notes of dark chocolate and toffee.

Single Origins and Specialty Lots
Beyond the blends, the assortment includes 23 single origins from countries such as Kenya, China, and Colombia. For instance, the Sironko from Uganda undergoes a 48-hour anaerobic fermentation. Afterward, the coffee is dried for three to five days until it reaches a precise moisture content of eleven percent. The El Jaguar from Nicaragua comes from a farm that also serves as an important bird sanctuary, home to over 375 bird species. From Venezuela, Giraffe imports La Union, featuring Typica and Bourbon varieties grown at an altitude of 1300 meters. The Fazenda Guardabaxo from Brazil, led by manager Marciano de Jesus, also stands out. This farm, employing forty seasonal workers, takes active measures against soil erosion, promotes biodiversity, and uses biofuels.
Physical Locations and Top-Tier Equipment
Giraffe operates from a roastery in Rotterdam-Schiebroek. In the city center, at Hoogstraat 46a, they have established their coffee bar and academy. According to content creator and barista Elseline Hokke, this is the location where all aspects of Giraffe physically converge. The bar is open seven days a week. Visitors can purchase freshly brewed coffee, barista tools, brewing equipment, and JING Tea.
In the academy, a Sanremo Zoe Competition espresso machine is used for training. In the coffee bar, the team works with a Sanremo Café Racer. Giraffe provides detailed advice regarding coffee freshness. They recommend letting espresso coffee rest for at least seven days after roasting. Beans from altitudes above 1800 meters sometimes continue to develop for three to four weeks. Ideally, coffee should be consumed within eight weeks of the roast date.
Training and the B2B Market
The basement of the coffee bar serves as the academy. Here, Giraffe offers thirteen different training courses. This includes accessible workshops for the home barista (such as Latte Art and Aeropress) and seven official SCA modules. An SCA Barista Skills Professional training lasts two days, followed by a three-hour theory and practical exam on the third day. Groups consist of a maximum of four participants to ensure focused attention.
Giraffe serves the hospitality sector, offices, and retail with tailored solutions. Business hospitality clients receive unlimited free training for their staff, customized to their own equipment. Giraffe also provides bespoke solutions for offices, including top-of-the-line machines, lease options, and service contracts. Well-known names on the client list include BDO Accountants & Belastingadviseur, Kees de Boekhouder, and CIC Rotterdam. The coffee brand is now widely represented and is even served in the hospitality sector in Asia.
Collaborations and Visibility
The brand is highly visible within the specialty coffee community. They participated in the Roast Masters 2025 during the Amsterdam Coffee Festival and are also on the official exhibitor list for the 2026 edition.
Giraffe also actively seeks high-quality collaborations outside its own product group. Together with the Rotterdam brand Heinde & Verre, they developed an exclusive chocolate bar using rare Venezuelan Ocumare cocoa and their Candy Cake coffee. With clothing brand and next-door neighbor Woei, they released special coffee from China (Gui Ben) and a clothing line. These successful cross-overs strengthen the story of origin and consistently revolve around the local community, timing, and absolute product quality.

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