Coffee is a big part of the culture in Hamburg. It’s no surprise when you look into it. Germany is Europe’s largest importer of green coffee beans, has the largest coffee roasting industry in Europe and, unsurprisingly, has the highest volume of coffee sales in Europe, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands! We spent some time visiting a whole range of cafés in Hamburg to check the scene out in this lively harbour city.
Read on to find out about some highly rated coffee roasters and local hidden gems, in search of that sweet spot that not only serves great coffee, but also has space for working on a laptop, access to wifi and charging points for your devices. Not every place ticks every box, but there’s always a café in Hamburg to fit your needs and suit your style, whether you’re on a workation or a weekend getaway.
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Cafés in Hamburg for a working breakfast
Nord Coast Coffee Roastery
✓ Great for serious coffee connoisseurs
✓ Great for breakfast
✓ Great for service
✓ Free wifi
✓ Free plug sockets for charging
✓ Drink in or takeaway
There might be a queue to get a table but it’s worth the wait. Nord Coast Coffee Roastery is one of the most popular places to get a coffee in Hamburg, and for good reason. The service is friendly, the staff know what they’re talking about and you’ll be able to find a brew that suits you.
After attempting to get in for a Saturday afternoon coffee and finding a queue with a 40-minute wait, we decided to get up early on Sunday and head there for breakfast instead. We arrived ten minutes before the opening time at 9am to find ourselves already third in the queue.
By the time the doors opened, the queue was long enough to fill every table in the two-storey coffee shop! This place is certainly popular, but this was on a weekend, so it may be different during the week.
Inside you will find information about the available coffees you can order, as well as bags of beans for you to buy and take home. There is a nice amount of space, and it was perfectly normal to have your laptop out on the table while enjoying the atmosphere.
Most of the tables have a plugin nearby. There’s strong wifi, and you don’t even need a password to connect. Just a quick click, and away you go.
The food tastes as good as it looks, and the prices are reasonable. We enjoyed our colourful and vitamin-packed pitaya bowl, sprinkled with coconut flakes, and scrambled eggs with porcini butter. Beautifully presented, and, most importantly, very tasty!
Nord Coast Coffee Roastery is a relaxed place for a break and a bite to eat, and also a great space for a working breakfast or coffee. Another bonus is that it’s just across the road from Mahnmal St. Nikolai, so when you’ve finished your coffee you can hop in the elevator and see a view of Hamburg from 75 metres high. Wow!
Amber Café
✓ Great for breakfast
✓ Great for service
✓ Free wifi (just ask for the password at the counter)
✓ Free plug sockets for charging
✓ Drink in or takeaway
We stumbled on this place as it was conveniently located halfway between our hotel (Motel One Am Michel) and where we wanted to be that morning (Miniatur Wunderland). We were hungry for breakfast, and also had a few emails that needed answering before a morning of sightseeing.
Amber Café opens earlier than other cafes in the area, at 8am instead of 9am, which is a great advantage if you’re trying to skip the queues at the busy tourist attractions or get a head start on a good day of work.
The staff were friendly, approachable and very welcoming of tourists. There is a great selection of pastries, both sweet and savoury, and the coffee was pretty great too. The cheese croissant and cherry himbeer schnecken (swirl pastry) we had were huge, and delicious!
Amber Café also offers an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet option on a Saturday and Sunday for €17. We arrived just before this started and decided to stick to a couple of pastries, coffees and a yoghurt. But the spread looked pretty good and would be a fantastic option if you have more time for a leisurely brunch or if you want to spend some time working while you indulge.
There is fast free wifi available here. You just need to ask at the counter for a voucher with the password – remember to do this when you order your coffee and you’ll be golden.
Cafés in Hamburg for an afternoon coffee power hour
Public Coffee Roasters
✓ Great for serious coffee connoisseurs
✓ Great for service
✓ Free wifi
✓ Free plug sockets for charging
✓ Drink in or takeaway
With four locations around Hamburg, you’ll never be far from a Public Coffee Roasters. We opted for the smaller location on Wexstraße in the city centre to take a break and check a few emails over coffee before heading out to walk around the parks of Hamburg.
This was actually the first of the Public Coffee Roasters cafés in Hamburg to open, back in 2014. Don’t be fooled by its city centre location; it’s outside of the hustle and bustle so you’ll be able to concentrate on that afternoon coffee power hour.
You can take a perch on the breakfast-bar-style bench looking out of the window (perfect for people-watching), or set up on one of the rustic wooden tables.
This place has a great selection of coffee that you can drink in, take away or buy to make at home. No worries if you’re not sure what to choose, as help is at hand! The friendly woman who served us was really helpful in recommending a coffee we would like.
The Wexstraße café is the smallest in the chain, so it can fill up quickly. If you want a seat you need to get here early or be prepared for a little wait. We arrived just as it opened at 11am on a Sunday, and all of the tables were full by the time we had finished our coffees and headed out.
A much bigger Public Coffee Roasters location on Brandstwiete overlooks the water just across from the coffee museum, with seating for 80 people inside and another 70 outside. This café was closed for renovation during our visit, but it could be a great place to enjoy some sunshine by the canal.
Café May St Pauli
✓ Great for cake
✓ Great for service
✓ Wifi (public wifi costs €4.95 per day)
✓ Free plug sockets for charging
✓ Drink in or takeaway
Filled with artwork and a relaxed buzz about the place, you won’t want to miss a visit to Café May, in the lively neighbourhood of St. Pauli. We fuelled an afternoon coffee power hour here with a large slice of freshly baked cake and a brilliantly crafted coffee to match.
Our visit to Café May was after a harbour boat tour and a daytime walk through the famous Reeperbahn. The sun was shining and the outside tables were full of people taking a break. We almost didn’t go inside as it looked so full, but we were glad we did, as we found oodles of space with comfy sofas and chairs in a room around to the back.
The service was fast after a short queue to get to the counter. You’ll definitely want to try one of the cakes here! The slices are so huge that we just shared one between the two of us (but ordered a homemade quiche as well for good measure).
Most of the tables and sofas are next to power points. Combine this with the comfortable seating and the lounge-type ambiance, and you could easily while away a couple of afternoon hours here, recharging and catching up on some admin.
While the café itself doesn’t have free wifi, there is local wifi you can connect to at a small cost if you need to get online. Otherwise, it’s a great place for getting some offline work done while indulging in a creative atmosphere.
Cafés in Hamburg to check emails over lunch
Café Kostbar
✓ Great for breakfast and lunch
✓ Amazing blended juices
✓ Great for service
✓ Free wifi (just ask for the password at the counter)
✓ Free plug sockets for charging
✓ Drink in or takeaway
We loved hanging out in the laidback district of Sternschanze during our workation in Hamburg. It’s full of independent cafés and bars, walls covered in graffiti and street art, bicycles to-ing and fro-ing, and trees lining the roadside. There is a very left-field and creative essence about the place.
This is where Café Kostbar is located, and part of the reason we loved it so much! This easy-going café is the perfect place to stop for lunch, a coffee, or one of their specialist freshly blended juices.
Café Kostbar is a lot bigger than it looks from the outside, with a whole extra room through the back. There is a lot of choice on the menu. We ordered some tasty pasta and a brokkoli auflauf (broccoli baked with potatoes and cheese).
We checked our emails while waiting for the food to come, and we certainly weren’t the only people doing a spot of work. One woman even pulled out and plugged in a second screen for her laptop! It definitely felt like you could work here for a while without being disturbed.
Unsurprisingly, as a popular spot for remote workers, there are plugs at most tables for you to charge your electronics. The wifi is fast and free – just ask at the counter for the password.
Our food was tasty and reasonably priced, but the thing that really stood out for me were the blended juices. It was just what was needed after a Saturday evening sampling some of the local beers around the same area!
Sternschanze feels like a great place to be for creative entrepreneurs, and Café Kostbar is in the heart of it. It’s easy to reach by zipping up on the yellow U3 line from St Pauli, or you can take a mindful half-hour stroll through the green parks of Planten un Blomen from the city centre.
Schönes Leben
✓ Great for breakfast and lunch
✓ Great for cake
✓ Free plug sockets for charging
✓ Drink in or takeaway
Schones Leben feels slightly more like a restaurant than a café or coffee shop, with a formal, classy vibe. We still felt comfortable grabbing a coffee and snack here while recharging after a morning’s sightseeing.
This place offers a lovely spacious setting to grab lunch and check some emails in the middle of the Speicherstadt, Hamburg’s warehouse district. Located in an old warehouse on the docks itself, the space is big and open with plenty of windows and seats. Some have plugs, but check before you sit down if you need to charge.
We haven’t listed this café as having wifi because, technically, it doesn’t. But there is access to a free public wifi if you’re sat towards the front of the building, which we did, and it worked fine. Otherwise, you might need to tether to a mobile device, or just enjoy the coffee and food before heading to another nearby café.
Schones Leben would also be a nice setting for a working lunch catchup if you are meeting someone during your time in Hamburg.
Cafés in Hamburg just for the coffee!
Kaffeemuseum Burg
✓ Great for serious coffee connoisseurs
✓ Great for service
✓ Drink in or takeaway
You probably have the city’s Coffee Museum (Kaffeemuseum Burg) on your list of things to do in Hamburg if you’re seriously into coffee, but it’s also great if you’re just looking to take a break and rest your feet. This café is located in the warehouse district and is full of historic ambiance.
It’s a fantastic place to try some great coffee, and the staff really know their stuff. We were recommended a Kenyan and a Peruvian bean with some delicious, photogenic cakes to go with it, and we weren’t disappointed. Coffee memorabilia and historic artefacts are dotted around the room and on the walls.
Once you’ve had a rest you can head into the museum to learn all about Hamburg’s coffee traditions, or simply buy some of the coffee from the little on-site shop to take home with you.
Our visit to Kaffeemuseum Burg came just after a couple of storms, so sadly we were unable to visit the museum as it had been damaged and was under repair. We’ll definitely be back to see it when we return to this vibrant city, and to try some more of the amazing coffees!
Cafés in Hamburg: honourable mentions
There are a couple of cafés in Hamburg where we only had a brief chance to stop by and weren’t able to sample the coffee, but we thought would still be worth mentioning.
Copenhagen Coffee Lab
A few weeks before our trip to Hamburg, Alex spent a four-day workation in Lisbon, Portugal, which also has a vibrant coffee culture. We noticed quite a few cultural crossovers between the cities, not least because of the riverside locations, and also the Portuguese Quarter in Hamburg where you will find some of the city’s best restaurants!
While exploring on our last day in Hamburg we walked past the Copenhagen Coffee Lab. This caught Alex’s eye because he’d spent an hour recharging over a cuppa at a Copenhagen Coffee Lab in Lisbon.
The small café chain originated in Denmark (surprisingly enough), and now has coffee shops in Portugal, France and Germany. The one we walked past in Hamburg was on Poolstraße, but there are several of them around the city. These are relaxed spots, usually with rustic decor, to sip a craft coffee and feel at home with your laptop out.
Camping Coffee
If you’re looking for a coffee shop in Hamburg that has novelty value and a quirky setting, then check out Camping Coffee! This super-cool coffee outlet is in the form of a converted camper van that has been transformed into a coffee shop in the middle of a mall.
Unfortunately, we arrived a bit early in the day to try out the renowned espresso blend served at Camping Coffee, made from 50% Brazilian, 30% Indian and 20% Kenyan coffees. It was a Sunday, and it doesn’t open until 12noon inside the Kaufmannshaus shopping complex.
The camper is surrounded by funky chairs, stools and tables, intermingled with plants to give it an in-the-forest feel. It’s not somewhere that is conducive to working, but certainly not a bad shout for some socialising over a coffee while exploring the city.
Check out the story of Camping Coffee for more background on this place.
Map of cafés in Hamburg
The map below shows the locations of the cafés in Hamburg we have featured in this article:
For a more focused workspace in the city, see our review of two excellent creative coworking spaces in Hamburg.
Have you visited any different cafés in Hamburg? Let us know about your favourite coffee shops in the city in the comments below.
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