The scent of floral honey and rose fills my senses. I’m at a barista training in Nepal, surrounded by attendees carefully measuring the water temperature in their kettles before pouring over bowls of coffee from districts like Nuwakot, Dhankuta, Illam, or Kavrepalanchok. Each of the coffee’s are processed differently: Red Honey, Natural Anaerobic fermentation, and Natural process. Women play a major role in picking cherries and sorting the unroasted seeds within. A first for my town, I am one of the enthusiasts attending this coffee tasting event, organized by Baari Roastery, a home-grown coffee enterprise in Biratnagar, 235 miles from Nepal’s capital city, Kathmandu.
Nepal, my home, is a Himalayan nation. We are known for our mountains, trails, and high elevation tea gardens; coffee from Nepal is much less talked about. And that’s not just for export: here, tea (called chiya) is steeped in the everyday rituals of life. Visit someone’s home, and they’ll offer you tea. Bump into a friend on the street, and they’ll ask you to join in for a cup of tea.
But now this deeply rooted tea culture is making room for a complimentary growing coffee scene. This extend from beyond Kathmandu, the nation’s urban center, and into every corner of life in Nepal. Entrepreneurs are shifting Nepal’s tea-drinking habits into coffee, by opening up coffee shops, roasteries, and offering barista courses.
Coffee Versus Tea
Entrepreneurs don’t think coffee is a replacement, but an addition to Nepal’s steadily emerging beverage scene. Coffee runs parallel to this long-standing tea tradition, according to the husband-and-wife owners of Baari Roastery, Yunesh Raj Shrestha and Deena Pradhan.
“Coffee is clearly finding its own place in contemporary Nepali life—with meetings, an early start to the workday, and even as an energy booster for gym-goers,” shares Shrestha.
To Shrestha and Pradhan, the explanation is simple: Overseas returnees. “They have played an important role in introducing and shaping this culture. Having lived and worked in countries—Australia and Europe, they returned with new palates and habits formed through daily exposure to cafe culture abroad,” Shrestha tells me, “Which has influenced local consumption patterns.”
Now let me be clear: tea drinking in Nepal isn’t going anywhere. Young people here continue to hang out at both chiya pasals (tea shops) and coffee shops, with different intentions. Chiya pasals double up as “informal social spaces where youngsters gather to spend time together and enjoy a sense of community rooted in everyday life,” Shrestha said. Chiya pasals stand alongside coffee shops; supermarkets stock tea and coffee in neighboring shelves; this highlights how the old and the new exist together, each fulfilling a different purpose.
But coffee shops are evolving, too. “These have become extensions of the workplace and important meeting hubs for a new, corporate-oriented lifestyle among urban youth,” Shrestha observes.
Shrestha’s family has a hospitality background; she can legitimately claim to be the first to serve espresso at their cafe in Biratnagar, back in the early 2000s. Baari Roastery launched in 2020, and proudly names each single origin coffee they serve after the region they’re sourced from in Nepal: Kavre Single Origin, Nuwakot Highlands Washed, and Rasuwa Red Honey.
Coffee Farming in Nepal
Beyond the cities, in coffee-growing communities, coffee is a source of income for many women whose husbands work abroad or in cities for better earnings and opportunitie. “In a lot of coffee-growing communities, women play a major role in the farm,” Deena Pradhan tells me. These women do the majority of the coffee-picking and processing work, and “are essential to the quality and care in our coffee production.”
Coffee plantation records in Nepal go back to 1938. A hermit brought some coffee seeds from Sindu Province of Burma, present-day (Myanmar), planting them in Aapchaur, a hill village in Gulmi District, approximately 218 miles from Kathmandu. In 1981, the first commercial coffee nursery was established in there. Over the years, the cultivation spread to over 40 districts of Nepal.
“Coffee grows between 800 and 1,600 meters. Some regions—Rasuwa, Sankhuwasabha, Bhojpur, even cross 1,600 meters,” says Abhinayak Malla, founder of WakeCup Coffee. These altitudes have a unique warm and cool microclimate, Malla tells me. “In warm climates, cherry ripening will be fast; we can lose some of its good qualities. So, we need a moderate climate. The slower it ripens, the denser the coffee becomes. We need some sunlight, we need shade,” he explains.
All the coffee in Nepal—all of it—is grown by smallholder farmers. “We don’t have 50 hectares of land under coffee cultivation,” Malla tells Sprudge. “Here, coffee is grown in smaller areas, between two and five hectares of land. This makes the coffee very special.”
Founded in Biratnagar in 2017, Malla launched WakeCup Coffee to connect the rural farming economy of Nepal’s growing urban identiy. His coffee shop picked up locally as it not only promoted the coffee of Nepal, but also created an ambiance where consumers could sit and use the internet for hours while enjoying coffee. What started as a four-table outlet where consumers were more accustomed to drinking home-style instant coffee has expanded into two branches, with consumers developing a palate for specialty coffee grown at some of the highest altitudes.
Microclimate, smallholder farming, slow maturation, and shade-grown plants lend the flavor profile uniqueness and distinctness, further enhanced during processing. According to Nepal’s National Tea and Coffee Development Board (NTCDB), the area under coffee cultivation in 2024 and 2025 was approximately 5,501 hectares. The green coffee yield for this period was 707 tons. However, this production isn’t enough to compete with the growing domestic demand. As a result, Nepal relies on imports, which totaled 223.76 tons during the same period.
The board, like coffee shops, is also encouraging youth to develop their barista skills. Youth view these trainings differently: as a ticket to a global career.
Coffee as a ticket to a global career
Across Nepal, coffee has become a ticket to knowledge, a career path to move abroad, and an adventure. Coffee shops have barista courses and roasteries, and double up as spaces for tasting events. These events, like Baari Roastery’s event, educate enthusiasts about the coffee sector in Nepal.
Barista training is even marketed as the ticket for a life abroad. Coffee shops like D Cafeteria, located in Dharan, 215 miles from Kathmandu, equip trainees with brewing, setting up a bar, and cash management skills, preparing them for the international market. Graduates from the D Cafeteria training program have gone on to work in Australia, Europe, and the UAE.
This coffee shop has also introduced a monthly coffee subscription model. In a social media post, the coffee shop explains: “It’s definitely a first for the area and a smart move for anyone who needs their daily fix without the daily ‘ordering hassle.’” Such subscription models, the post explains, offer a better ‘per cup’ price for Lungo, Americano, or Latte “than buying individually.”
Elsewhere, on the outskirts of Pokhara, coffee experiences engage the senses. Airbnb host Dinesh Kanta Adhikary has a farm that does not produce large quantities of coffee. “It is just enough for ourselves and our guests,” he said. “You can make one kg [of] coffee out of five kg [of] raw beans.”
Through coffee-making activities, he offers guests a hands-on adventure. Visitors can visit his homestay at any time to see the process, but it is better during harvest season. Visitors are invited to pick cherries, pulp the skins, roast beans over fire, and grind them, ending their journey with a brew they craft.
Ridhi Agrawal is a freelance journalist based in Nepal. This is her first feature for Sprudge.