Your café is probably already on Roasters. The directory is community-curated and covers over 23,000 specialty cafés across 126 countries — most operators don't realise they have a profile until they search for their own shop and see it.

What you might not realise: that profile is the first thing many of your future customers see. Roasters users browse the city guide, filter by what they want (wifi, brunch, espresso, filter), and pick a café based on the profile. The profile is a storefront. Most operators have a storefront they've never seen.

This is what to look at and what to do about it.

What customers see when they tap your café

The profile has four sections, in this order:

1. Header. Your café name, neighbourhood, and the hero photo. The photo is the single highest-leverage element on the profile — it's what people decide on in the first half-second. A blurry phone photo from 2019 will lose you customers to a competitor with a sharp interior shot.

2. The signal row. Brew methods, opening hours, wifi availability, food, seating, distance from the user. This is the practical "can I go there right now?" information. Missing or wrong data here loses the customer immediately.

3. The review feed. Recent reviews from the community, with photos, scores, and notes. This is the trust layer. New cafés with no reviews look risky. Established cafés with a steady stream of reviews look like a sure thing.

4. Details and roaster. Espresso machine, grinder, roaster source, signature drinks if entered. Specialty drinkers actually read this section. A café using "House Espresso" tells them less than a café showing "April Coffee Roasters, monthly rotation."

The five profile fields that move the needle

If you do nothing else after claiming your profile, fix these five fields.

Hero photo. The single biggest predictor of someone tapping through from the city guide to your full profile. Use a horizontal interior shot, taken with natural light, showing the bar or seating area. Not a latte art close-up — that signals "any café" — but something that makes your space recognisable.

Opening hours. Wrong hours destroy trust. A user who shows up at 8:30 AM expecting you to be open and finds you closed will not come back, and they will leave a review saying so. Update hours immediately when they change, and add holiday closures.

Brew methods. The single largest filter users apply. "Espresso" alone tells them nothing. List specifically: espresso, V60, Chemex, Aeropress, batch brew, Kalita, cold brew. Specialty drinkers filter by their preferred method and won't see your café if you haven't said you offer it.

Roaster. If you serve a named roaster (your own or wholesale), put it on the profile. "House espresso" is invisible. "Father Carpenter" or "April Coffee Roasters" tells the audience exactly what to expect.

One signature drink or specialty item. Specialty drinkers travel for specific drinks. If your café has a known one — a particular cortado preparation, a seasonal signature, a notable filter program — name it on the profile.

Photos that work and photos that don't

The photo on your profile is doing more work than the rest of the page combined. A short list of what works:

Yes: wide interior shot showing the bar and a few customers, natural light, mid-morning.
Yes: the storefront from the street, recognisable enough to find when walking by.
Yes: a clean overhead of a flight (espresso, cortado, filter) showing your house drinks.
No: latte art close-up. Every café has one. It tells the customer nothing about your space.
No: the espresso machine on its own. Looks like a stock photo.
No: exterior shot in heavy rain or dark. The space looks closed and unwelcoming.
No: heavy filters, vignettes, vintage looks. Customers want to see what the space actually looks like.

If you have one good photographer in your life, ask them to spend 90 minutes in your café on a sunny morning. You'll get five years of profile photos from that single shoot.

Reviews — what to do, what not to do

Reviews come in regardless of whether you've claimed your profile. The difference claiming makes is that you can see them, respond to them, and contextualise them for future visitors.

The rules:

Respond to every review within 48 hours. Even a short thank-you is signal that you're paying attention.
Don't argue with bad reviews. Even when they're wrong. You're not writing for the reviewer; you're writing for the next person who reads it.
Don't ask for reviews aggressively. Specialty drinkers leave reviews when they want to. A sign next to the register asking for reviews looks desperate and produces low-quality ones.
Do follow up with reviewers who flag a real issue. If someone says the V60 was over-extracted, that's information you can use. Thank them for the specificity.

What to update quarterly

The profile is not "set and forget." Cafés change, and out-of-date profiles drive away the customers who would have come if the information were current. The quarterly update list:

Opening hours (especially seasonal changes)
Brew methods on offer (new equipment, dropped methods)
Roaster source (especially if you changed wholesale relationships)
Hero photo (refresh every 6-12 months as the space evolves)
Featured drink or seasonal special

Set a recurring 30-minute calendar block once per quarter to review the profile end-to-end. It's the cheapest marketing work you'll do all year.

Claim your profile

If you haven't already, claim your café on Roasters. The process is short — verify ownership through the contact details on the existing profile or email the team — and once you're verified, you have access to all the fields described above plus the operator dashboard for posting jobs, events, and announcements. Start the claim process here.