Cafés in Belgium Brussels
Brussels roasters from Laeken to Anderlecht, specialty bars on Rue Antoine Dansaert, the speculoos with your coffee and Antwerp's bean stocks.
Photo: Osman Yildiz, Pexels License
Belgium handles far more coffee than it drinks. It imported 282,000 tonnes of green coffee in 2024, 88% of it straight from producing countries, and re-exported 184,000 tonnes, about two-thirds, with France and the Netherlands the largest buyers.1 Antwerp is the hub: around 400,000 tonnes of beans sat in its port warehouses in 2021, and Molenbergnatie there calls itself the largest coffee broker in the port and in the world.2
Belgians drink about 5.7 kg of roasted coffee per person a year, more than Italians, and almost 87% of them have coffee every day, four cups on average.1 Retail sales rose from €652 million in 2021 to €775 million in 2023.1 Pads have lost ground, falling from 31% to 22% of the Belgian market, yet the roaster Beyers still makes 1.4 billion of them a year.1
Coffee entered the urban consumer culture of the lands that now make up Belgium at the start of the 18th century.3 Family roasting firms founded the Belgian Union of Coffee Roasters in Brussels on 25 May 1943, and the trade dates the Belgian habit of brewing through an individual cup filter to the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels.10
Belgium's café cities
Robusta, named in Brussels
The trade name of robusta coffee comes from a Brussels greenhouse. In 1887 the horticulturist Lucien Linden opened L'Horticulture Internationale on Rue Wiertz, and in August 1898 he sent two plant collectors to the Congo, then King Leopold II's personal possession as the Congo Free State.43 Belgium annexed the territory in 1908 and the Congo became independent in 1960.3
The collectors' shipments included several hundred seeds of a wild coffee tree planted at Lusambo, which Professor Émile Laurent had already brought back as specimens in 1896.4 Linden published it as Coffea robusta in his 1900 catalogue of economic plants and in 1901 shipped 160 plants to Java.54 Selected there, it revived coffee in the Dutch East Indies, where production had fallen sharply after leaf rust appeared.4
A speculoos on the saucer
The biscuit beside a Belgian coffee has a company history. In 1932 the baker Jan Boone set up Lotus Bakeries in Lembeke, in East Flanders, and wrapped his speculoos one by one to sell to cafés and restaurants as the biscuit to serve with coffee.67 By the 1950s the biscuits came in red wrappers and were popular in cafés.7
Biscoff, the export name, joins the words 'biscuit' and 'coffee'.7 Lotus took the word speculoos off its packs at home too from 2021, to build one global brand already sold as Biscoff in about 65 countries.6
Café liégeois, café viennois and chicory
The café liégeois takes its name from a siege. The dessert of cold coffee, coffee and vanilla ice cream and whipped cream was a variant of the café viennois until Paris renamed it during the First World War, honoring the forts of Liège, which held out from 5 to 16 August 1914.8 Liège itself, occupied until the 1918 armistice, kept the old name, and café viennois is still used there; in Belgium a shot of genever is sometimes added.8
Chicory is the older companion. The roasted root, drunk alone or blended with coffee, is still treated as a regional symbol in Belgium and in France's Nord-Pas-de-Calais.9
Specialty coffee and a roasting title
Specialty coffee has grown on top of the bulk trade. Demand is strongest in Brussels, Antwerp and Bruges, and almost all of it is arabica, though robusta is entering the segment.1 CBI names several micro roasters, among them one that buys directly from farms and roasts with solar power.1
From 25 to 27 June 2026 Brussels Expo hosted World of Coffee, with the world championships for brewing, roasting and coffee-and-spirits drinks.13 The roasting title stayed in Belgium: Benjamin Brassart, co-founder of Boo Coffee Roasters on the canal in Anderlecht, became the first Belgian to win a major title in roasting.14
Brussels, in French and Dutch
Brussels works in two languages. The capital region is officially bilingual, and each of its 19 municipalities has a French and a Dutch name: Ixelles is also Elsene, Saint-Gilles is Sint-Gillis.12
The city's coffee trade predates the specialty wave. Van Dael, a family shop in Laeken, part of the City of Brussels since 1921, has sold coffee since 1895, Corica has offered it since 1902, and Santos Palace has roasted in Molenbeek since 1911.1211 Newer bars sit on Rue Antoine Dansaert and spread across Ixelles and Saint-Gilles, and out to Anderlecht, Forest and Schaerbeek.11 A map launched during World of Coffee week counted about 90 specialty coffee locations in the city.3
Sources
- The Belgian market potential for coffee (updated 16 March 2026), CBI (Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries), accessed October 2026
- Nowhere in the world is more coffee stored than at the port of Antwerp (1 October 2021), VRT NWS, accessed October 2026
- A Deep Dive into Brussels' Coffee History + Top Shops to Visit in the City (Isabelle Mani, 22 July 2026), Barista Magazine Online, accessed October 2026
- Linden (Charles-Lucien), Biographie Coloniale Belge, t. IV (1955), col. 529-532, Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, accessed October 2026
- Coffea robusta L.Linden, Cat. Pl. Econ. 64 (1900), International Plant Names Index (IPNI), accessed October 2026
- Lotus zal geen speculoos meer verkopen, wel Biscoffs (31 October 2020), VRT NWS, accessed October 2026
- Biscoff (Derek Blyth, 17 November 2022), The Low Countries, accessed October 2026
- Café liégeois, Wikipédia (French), accessed October 2026
- Chicorée à café, Wikipédia (French), accessed October 2026
- The link between Belgium and coffee, food.be (Fevia), accessed October 2026
- A cup of your finest coffee please (27 August 2026), visit.brussels, accessed October 2026
- List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- World Coffee Championships Head to Bangkok & Brussels in 2026, World Coffee Championships, accessed October 2026
- World's best coffee roaster is based in Brussels (7 July 2026), Focus on Belgium, accessed October 2026
Cafés in Belgium: questions
Why do cafés in Belgium serve a speculoos biscuit with coffee?
The habit goes back to Lotus Bakeries, founded in 1932 in Lembeke, East Flanders, by the baker Jan Boone. He wrapped his speculoos one by one and sold them to cafés and restaurants as the biscuit to serve with coffee. The export name Biscoff joins 'biscuit' and 'coffee', and from 2021 it replaced 'speculoos' on Belgian packs too.
How much coffee do people drink in Belgium?
Belgians drink about 5.7 kg of roasted coffee per person a year, more than Italians. Almost 87% of them drink coffee every day, four cups on average, and retail coffee sales in Belgium reached €775 million in 2023, up from €652 million in 2021.
What is a café liégeois, and what is it called in Belgium?
A dessert of cold coffee, coffee and vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Paris renamed the older café viennois during the First World War to honor the forts of Liège, which held out from 5 to 16 August 1914. In Liège, café viennois is still used, and in Belgium a shot of genever is sometimes added.
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