Stooker Specialty Coffee, The Roaster That Continue Amsterdam’s Long Time Coffee Relationship

The long-standing relationship between coffee and the city of Amsterdam is perfectly represented by Stooker, an established specialty coffee roaster who aims to create a beautiful community. 

The history of Amsterdam is strictly connected to coffee, and it’s no wonder considering that Dutch spies – at least according to a story that has become legend – were the first to stole a viable coffee plant from Mocha (Yemen) back in 1616, when the coffee trade was almost completely in Arab hands. Now, four centuries later, the bustling city of Amsterdam is home to several coffee shops and roasters, which still keep this long relationship alive. 

Stooker Specialty Coffee, located in the eastern part of the city, is one of the roasters that continues to carry on the local coffee tradition: officially founded in 2015, its story begins years before thanks to Onno van Zanten’s love for coffee. 

Onno, one of the main characters of the Dutch specialty coffee scene since 2008, a little bit later opened a pop-up café, with the purpose of sharing his coffee knowledge (and his delicious brews) with the local coffee community. 

It was in 2011 that Florian Hessel, among the many interesting characters of this lovely community, walked in the pop-up café and asked for a cup of coffee: it was an unwashed coffee from Panama, and for Florian it was just “love at first sip”.  

That first brew was enough for him to decide to join Onno to create something new, something bigger, something that could help them sharing the knowledge of specialty coffee: Stooker was born. 

Now, almost a decade later, Stooker is thriving thanks to continue collaborations with open, passionate and like-minded people: people who grow coffee, people who produce it, people who simply love to drink it: a lovely community that has one thing in common: they all enjoy the good stuff. 

Through steady relationships with long-time partners, distribution to the finest bars, hotels and restaurants around the world and ongoing knowledge sharing through lovely baristas and professional training courses, Stooker continues to pursue its mission of working to make a difference, both in the coffee world and in the local coffee community.