Sprudge readers are no strangers to the wonderful Copenhagen coffee scene. We’ve featured this city’s epic cafe culture not once but twice on Sprudge, first in a 2018 guide and then again in a 2023 guide. But that wasn’t enough for Klaus Thomsen, of the influential Copenhagen coffee brand Coffee Collective. He reached out to Sprudge earlier this year to let us know that there was even more great coffee worth being featured on Sprudge.
Who are we to disagree? And so in a very special pre-World Of Coffee feature to help support the coffee itineraries of thirsty travelers from near and far, we sat down with Klaus Thomsen himself to discuss his personal picks for where to visit in Copenhagen. Read on for several cafes across the city, plus a collection of top bakeries.
Coffee Collective — 7 locations + Collective Bakery
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thomsen recommends you check out his own Coffee Collective cafes while you’re in town for World of Coffee. But when asked about which cafe in particular he recommends, he suggested you visit all seven!
“It’s hard,” Thomsen tells Sprudge. “It’s like picking between your kids, you know? We really made an effort to try and give people a good excuse to visit all of our locations.” The company will be offering a full slate of WOC programming throughout the week.
But surely there must be one or two cafes that are most worth visiting? “The two downtown locations are easier to get to,” Thomsen says. “Jægersborggade is where we started our business and it’s got a cool neighborhood vibe, with lots of really cool places to visit. It’s not like visiting a Brooklyn-style coffee shop anywhere in the world; it feels like Copenhagen. And it’ll be featuring an all-Kenyan menu during WOC which should be very interesting.”
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Prolog — 2 locations
“I think Copenhagen has an amazing coffee scene,” says Thomsen. “Prolog are a little less known and very local. It’s just two guys who have been in the industry for a while, and they only have two small coffee shops, but they’re super nice guys and I think a lot of people will like how small and immediate it feels. It reminds me a little bit of when we started 17 years ago, which was the last time this event was held in Copenhagen.”
April Coffee — 2 locations
“I like the Ryesgade location best, the original one,” says Klaus Thomsen. “A lot of people will make it to their new shop downtown as well. You have their shop and one of the La Cabra shops and one of our shops in a five minute triangle downtown, and that’s the golden circle tour of coffee shops right there.”
La Cabra — 2 locations
“La Cabra has become really big now,” says Klaus. “They want to expand globally. The downtown location is where most people will go, but if you have the time to make the trip out and visit their roastery, there is also a small coffee shop there. It’s easy to get around on the metro. We have to remind foreigners that Copenhagen is a really small city. It’s not like Los Angeles.”
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Darcy’s Kaffe
“Darcy’s is one of the most popular multi-roaster cafes in Copenhagen, and one of the first as well. They’ve been good at promoting the idea of the multi roaster cafe, serving roasters like Sey, DAK, and a number of UK roasters as well. They do really amazing baked goods and small breakfast & lunch things too. It’s a very cozy place, a barista’s go-to place.”
Wild Horses — 2 locations
“The guy who owns this had a shop in Berlin; he’s originally from Australia, and he used to work for Darcy’s before opening his own place in a sort of remote area of Copenhagen where there wasn’t anything. Darcy’s has gained such a good traction for local people and it’s become a favorite—it’s a very personal sort of cafe, a multi-roaster focused on Berlin and other countries.
Kaffedepartementet
“This is a small micro roaster in an up-and-coming area of town where visitors probably wouldn’t have gone ten years ago. I think this is a great coffee shop, very fun, with just one location.
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Hip Hop
“From a former Prolog employee and roaster who opened his own tiny little shop. It’s very hip-hop inside, with just an espresso machine and two chairs. It’s in a posh old ladies area called Frederiksberg, but it works really well. It’s a fun vibe.
Orsa Coffee
“One of the newest places in Copenhagen. This spot was started by two baristas, and it’s really good—they’re a multi-roaster located in downtown.”
Democratic
“This is one the places that’s been around for quite a while, and they’re famous for making homemade croissants made in the shop. They also roast themselves. Great cafe!”
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The Artisan
“This is run by two guys—one from Peru, the other from Denmark—and they only serve Peruvian coffees, which can be quite good. I think this spot is a little overlooked, and they roast everything in-house on a one kilo roaster made in Copenhagen.”
Additional recommendations from Klaus Thomsen:
Hans, Yellow Bird, Social Brew, Det Vide His.
Bakery recommendations from Klaus Thomsen:
- Collective Bakery of course ;)
- Juno the Bakery
- Københavns Bageri
- Alice
- Hart
- Lille Bakery
- Rondo
- Meyers Bageri
- Hahnemanns
- Andersen & Maillard
