Cafés in Cambodia Phnom Penh and Siem Reap

Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri, the robusta highlands

The ministry names five coffee provinces: Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri, Pursat, Pailin and Tboung Khmum.¹ Mondulkiri is the largest province in the country, 14,288 km² at 190 to 1,000 m, and its capital, Senmonorom, is about 390 km from Phnom Penh; the Bunong are the largest of its ten indigenous minorities.⁶

Coffee there is recent. Planting in Mondulkiri began in 1996, nearly stopped in 2000 and 2001 when bean prices collapsed, and picked up again as prices recovered, Yang Saing Komar, formerly of the NGO CEDAC, told Thmey Thmey in 2019.⁷ He estimated nearly 300 hectares in the province in 2018, about double the year before.⁷

Ratanakiri, a basalt plateau of red soils around the town of Banlung, had large French plantations, but of rubber, not coffee.⁸ Its coffee peaked in the mid- to late 1990s, when more than 500 hectares grew it and beans sold for US$2 a kilo.⁹ One grower in O'Yadaw who started in 1997 at about US$2,500 a tonne had seen prices fall as low as US$400 by 2009, and only 150 hectares were left, the provincial agriculture department said, as farmers turned to cashews, cassava and rubber.⁹

A small crop in a hot year

Part of the harvest goes abroad: 601 tonnes in 2025, to Estonia, China, Japan and Russia.¹ In October 2026 Kiri Coffee, a Mondulkiri producer, showed its beans at SIAL Paris in a Cambodian pavilion of 16 companies.¹

The 2026 season was hard on the trees. Mondulkiri has become a key growing area thanks to its altitude and climate, but a strong El Niño brought heatwaves and drought, and one grower there told Bernama that about 30% of his newly planted trees had died.² The association, which values the industry at US$200 million, urged smallholders to improve water management and irrigation.²

Iced, sweet and mostly imported

The everyday cup is cold. Street stalls pour sweet iced coffee with condensed milk for commuters every morning, and over the past decade specialty cafés have added pour-over, siphon and cold brew.¹⁰ Their customers have changed too: "Customers now ask about the farms, the roasting process, and even brewing styles," the Phnom Penh roaster Kimheng Chhay said at a coffee event in the capital.¹⁰

Most beans in those cups still come from abroad, at an average of about US$6,000 a tonne in 2025, according to Dup Piseth, president of the coffee association.¹ Back in 2019, Yang Saing Komar put Cambodia's own beans at between 5% and 10% of what the country drank.⁷

Phnom Penh and Siem Reap

Phnom Penh, the capital, is where the street cart and the roaster share a block. Brew houses have sprung up on its street corners in recent years, Thmey Thmey noted in 2019.⁷ The city's cafés range from sidecar stalls and 24-hour counters to roasters near the Russian Market and in Toul Kork.

Siem Reap runs on the temple timetable. Its cafés cluster on both banks of the Siem Reap River, around Wat Bo, Taphul and the Old Market, and several open at 06:00 for visitors heading out to Angkor.