Coffee and cycling — a cultural pairing.

Where the bond started

The connection between competitive cycling and specialty coffee traces back to the late 1960s, when the Italian espresso machine manufacturer FAEMA sponsored a road cycling team that included Belgian legend Eddy Merckx. The team won; the espresso machine became iconic; cyclists and espresso bars stayed bound.

By the 1990s and 2000s, road cycling crews across Europe were meeting at cafés before and after rides. As third-wave coffee emerged in the same cities — Antwerp, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Portland — cyclists became part of the early specialty café customer base.

The bike café, as a category

A bike café is a specialty café built around the cycling community. Two common formats:

• Hybrid coffee + bike shop: espresso bar at the front, repair stand and parts wall in the back. Examples include Look Mum No Hands! (London), Lamarck (Paris), and On Y Va (Barcelona).
• Coffee-first with a cyclist following: a specialty café that opens early, has bike racks out front, and has become a regular meeting point for road crews. Most cycling cities have a handful of these — Roasters surfaces which ones in each.

The ritual

For most riders, the ride-and-coffee ritual is the point. A pre-ride espresso at 7am; a midway café stop on a long loop; a post-ride flat white at the home café. It's how cyclists socialise, plan, and recover. Performance is secondary — though caffeine does help (scientifically), and is legal under WADA.

Where to find bike cafés

Roasters maps cycling-friendly specialty cafés in the cities with the strongest scenes. A few good starting points:

• Bike cafés in Amsterdam
• Bike cafés in Copenhagen
• Bike cafés in Berlin
• Bike cafés in London
• Bike cafés in Portland
• Bike cafés in Melbourne

Or download the app to filter any city by cycling-friendly cafés.