Not everyone knows HAYB began back in 2016 as Coffee Republic, and that the name HAYB, How Are You Brewing, arrived a couple of years in with a full rebrand. That reinvention feels like it became part of who you are.
How much of today's HAYB, the playfulness and the identity, do you trace back to that fresh start?
That fresh start was everything for us. The rebranding process, born out of necessity due to a trademark conflict, became the perfect catalyst to truly embrace who we are. Almost all of our current playfulness traces back to this moment.
It solidified our core mission of Effortless speciality. We want to deliver delicious, high-quality coffee that you can brew completely your own way. You can see this joy in our products, like our Speciality Single Origin series, where the beautiful package designs use colors to reflect specific flavor notes, making it super easy to choose without reading complex descriptions.
It also gave us the freedom to experiment with fun projects like barrel-aged beans and co-ferment blends.
HAYB has been a family business from day one, Robert and Wiktor, building it together. What does each of you bring that the other doesn't, and where do you most enjoy disagreeing?
Robert is the anchor. Coming from a long career in the corporate coffee sector, he brings deep industry experience, business stability, and a focus on uncompromising quality.
Wiktor, who started out as a journalism student, was the visionary behind our communication and brand identity. He was the one pushing the modern, vibrant, and approachable marketing tone that breaks down the walls of coffee elitism.
Wiktor was pushing for a crazy, out-of-the-box marketing idea or a highly experimental coffee processing method, while Robert always looks at it through the lens of scalability, costs, and stability.
But it's exactly this friction, the clash between seasoned corporate wisdom and modern, colorful specialty energy, that pushes HAYB forward.
Your core filter range is called "Sie Przelewa" (a Polish play on "it pours over," a wink at pour-over brewing), with each coffee named simply: Klasyk (the Classic), Owoc (Fruit) and Kwiat (Flower). How do you decide what earns a permanent place in the core range versus what stays a rotating single origin? What makes a coffee a "Klasyk"?
Thanks to liters of coffee consumed, we had a clear picture in our minds of what a "fruity," "tropical," or "floral" coffee should taste like. We decided these would always be single-origin coffees.
The Się Przelewa line always scores 85+ points. We wanted it to serve as an invitation to the world of specialty coffee, offering an attractive price point because we buy a full container of one coffee per season, about 320 bags, rather than 5 bags like with micro-lots, while stripping away all the dense information found on our monthly rotating singles.
Of course, if you want that information, you can always find it on our website.
At the other end you've got Chillwave, the co-ferments, the strawberry blend, and that "small revolution" you like to talk about. How far will you push a flavour before it stops feeling like HAYB?
Chillwave is a response to market demand. Polish consumers love fruity coffees.
I don't know if I'd want a permanent co-ferment in our core range, but having a summer menu gives us the freedom to play and experiment.
If you love this series, it gives you something to look forward to, watching out for it like the first rays of sun after a long winter :)
Your whole identity is effortless speciality, stripping the heaviness out of the specialty world. But effortless usually hides a lot of work. What's the hardest part of the job that your customers never see?
Effortless specialty is all about the fact that the hardest part of coffee is sourcing.
If you have great green beans that are well-roasted, brewing them is actually quite simple. That's what we focus on: making sure the selection and roast profile of the coffees our guests can buy are diverse and top-tier.
You've gone from sponsoring the Brewers Cup back in 2018 to opening your Łodygowa roastery as the home for competitions like the Roast Masters. Why give competitors the run of your space rather than just entering yourselves? What do you enjoy about hosting?
The coffee community has always been deeply important to us. When we moved the roastery to a new location, we wanted to strengthen that community.
That's why we gladly host competitions like the ones you mentioned with ROEST and Fest Coffee Mission, as well as our own Effortless Cup.
Competition drives growth. And we're growing too. Myself and Marek Witak, our Head of Academy, competed in the Brewers Cup this year, we enter the Roasting Championships every year, and on our team we have a Polish Roasting Champion, our Head Roaster, Rafał Kaniewski.
HAYB has never been shy about backing causes, from your International Women's Day coffee to the donations to the Rak'n'Roll Foundation, and even a release celebrating mixed-breed rescue dogs. Do you think a coffee company has a role to play beyond what's in the cup, and how do you choose which causes to stand behind?
If we can help someone through what we do, why wouldn't we? :)
For our subscribers who've never set foot in Warsaw, what would you want them to understand about Polish specialty coffee right now, and HAYB's place in it, that they probably wouldn't expect?
The Polish specialty scene is huge and absorbs everything like a sponge.
We have world-class baristas like Aga Rojewska and top roasters like Mateusz Derkacz, second in the world in coffee roasting.
From my perspective, the whole industry sticks together and we can always count on each other, whether it's helping organize competitions or reaching out when you run short on coffee and need to borrow a bag of green beans from someone :)
You've quietly grown beyond coffee into tea and cascara, cold brew, even non-alcoholic beer. Is that HAYB following where your customers are heading, or leading them somewhere new?
We want unique products that we personally enjoy every day.
Nearly 30 people work at HAYB, and every single one of us appreciates high-quality tea or a great craft beer after work.
We have the opportunity to collaborate with the best, so we use it to create top-tier products that we love consuming ourselves.
For the coffee you're featuring with us this month, tell us a bit about it: what drew you to this lot, the producer or importer behind it (you often work with smaller partners like 1000 Hills in Rwanda), and how you'd recommend our subscribers brew it to get the most from it at home.
Kwiat
Kwiat is our safe bet. For years, this line has featured a washed Ethiopian coffee, most often from the Yirgacheffe region. The lightness and floral character of these beans are its trademark.
Every year, we spend a lot of time selecting that one cooperative to contract with. We try to return to the same importers and producers, but with prices fluctuating so much, sometimes we have to dig deeper and look longer to ensure maximum quality at that price point.
Kwiat is a very light brew, tea-like on the palate. I always grind Ethiopian beans slightly coarser than other coffees I brew on pour-over. I pour water at 96-98°C and aim not to exceed 2:30 when brewing a 300ml drip.
I target lightness in the cup and delicate floral notes.
Guatemala El Zapote
Guatemala El Zapote is a coffee from Julio Meléndez. I had the chance to meet this cowboy in person. Awesome guy running a farm that looks like a pharmacy: spotless, impeccably organized, with processes refined to mastery.
And his beans are a true classic: chocolate, red fruits, proper "coffee-flavored coffee." A masterpiece.
Ah, I just hope Julio feels the same way about the Polish donuts my wife and I fried up at his farmhouse!
Honduras El Puente
Honduras El Puente, on the other hand, comes from legends.
Marysabel and Moisés Caballero are master coffee growers. The world's biggest roasteries buy beans from them, and 10 years ago when I got into coffee, I dreamed of one day being able to chat with them and order green coffee.
I'm living the dream I pictured back then, and their coffee this season is a masterclass in clarity.
Any closing message you'd like to leave our subscribers? A little hope, joy, humour, or simply how you'd like them to remember HAYB.
We want our coffee to be an accessible pleasure for everyone, a space for experimentation, and a way to juggle diversity.
So keep experimenting, stay open-minded, and never let anyone tell you how your coffee should taste.
Just ask yourself: How Are You Brewing?
