Coffee in Tbilisi and Almaty from the turkuli pot to the bowl of shai

Georgia and Kazakhstan both reached the espresso bar from homes where something else came first. Georgia drank black tea from Guria and Samegrelo, and coffee culture only took the lead from the 1990s.¹ In Kazakhstan, tea sits at the center of hospitality.² As recently as 2016, a café manager in Astana described the country's coffee houses as only starting to develop.³

Both have caught up quickly. Georgia paid $51.1 million for 7,050 tonnes of imported coffee between January and November 2025, against $14.4 million a decade earlier.⁴ In Kazakhstan, coffee shops sold 24% more cups in 2025 than in 2024, by figures from 120 cafés using the Poster till system.⁵

Turkuli, Batumi-style coffee and the pot in hot sand

In Georgian, coffee is ყავა (q̇ava, borrowed from the Arabic qahwa).⁶ The older everyday cup is turkuli, from თურქული, the Georgian word for "Turkish": coffee boiled unfiltered in a small pot.⁷ It never went away. In 2025 Georgia Today listed Turkish-style brews, with instant, among the cheaper options that lower-income drinkers choose over café espresso.¹

Habits differ by region. On the Black Sea coast, Turkish influence shows in batumuri qava, Batumi-style coffee boiled unfiltered in a cezve, while Tbilisi cafés mostly serve European-style espresso drinks and only occasionally American filter coffee.⁸ At home, instant coffee still dominated the market in 2021.⁸

The slowest version survives too. A few Tbilisi coffee houses heat the pot in a tray of hot sand, an old method credited with a distinct aroma; one on Pushkin Street is built around it.⁹

Vera, Sololaki and Fabrika

Specialty coffee in Tbilisi is recent. Coffee Lab opened in 2016 and Shavi Coffee Roasters in 2021, and the Tbilisi Coffee Festival, first held in 2023, drew about 50 companies and 5,000 visitors to its third edition in 2025.⁴ Coffee has moved from the kitchen into work meetings, social plans and short daytime breaks.⁴

Vera is where Sprudge found two of the city's roasting cafés in 2022: one inside the Stamba Hotel, and Shavi on a corner of the neighborhood.¹⁰ In Sololaki, the monochrome look of one underground third-wave coffee house struck a 2026 guide as "a bit jarring" for its old-world street.¹¹

Fabrika occupies a Soviet-era sewing factory at 8 Egnate Ninoshvili Street, its courtyard lined with cafés and bars.¹² Shavi has a branch close to it and to Marjanishvili metro station, and the same 2026 guide picked out a café on Aghmashenebeli Avenue in Chugureti for people-watching.¹¹

International chains came last. Costa Coffee arrived in Georgia about a year before March 2026 and by then had three Tbilisi cafés, the first in Vake on Ilia Chavchavadze Avenue.⁴ Starbucks followed on the same avenue, opening the country's first branch in Axis Towers on 3 July 2026; by mid-morning a line had formed outside.¹³

Laptops in Tbilisi after 2022

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people to Georgia, many of them employed remotely.¹⁴ As coworking spaces filled, popular informal work spots such as Fabrika and the Stamba Hotel, and many coffee shops, banned laptops for the first time.¹⁴ A visa program had already made the country a base for digital nomads.¹⁰

Both uses of a café carry on side by side. Georgia Today described Tbilisi coffeehouses in 2025 as places of freelance work as well as conversation.¹ In 2026 laptop-free tables were called a growing trend in the city, and at least one bookshop café limited its Wi-Fi to three hours.¹¹

Shai and the dastarkhan

The Kazakh word for tea, шай (shai), comes from the Chinese chá.¹⁵ Tea came along the Silk Road and stayed a luxury for centuries; tea-drinking customs from Russia reached the elite in the late 19th century and then everyone else.² Black tea is the favorite, often with milk, and tea brewed strong and mixed with milk is kyzyl shai, "red tea".²

Pouring is a skill. Traditionally an experienced woman of the household serves, the most honored guests, usually elders, come first, and the kettle is kept hot because Kazakhs do not drink lukewarm tea.² In the south and west, the tea goes into small bowls called kese or piyala, and the more often a host refills them, the more care is shown.²

The setting is the dastarkhan, a round, low table laden with food, more common now in rural homes and at celebrations than in city apartments.¹⁶ A tea course with light snacks usually opens the meal, refusing tea can be taken as impolite, and an empty cup goes back to the hostess for more.¹⁶ Milky tea after beshbarmak, the boiled-meat dish, is part of the same routine.³

Almaty's coffee boom

Almaty's first coffee houses, Coffeedelia and Biskvit, opened about 15 years before Forbes Kazakhstan surveyed the market in 2019.¹⁷ By then the "golden square" between Zheltoksan, Kabanbay Batyr, Kunaev and Abay streets held 30 to 40 coffee shops per square kilometer, and americano, cappuccino and latte outsold espresso.¹⁷

Chains arrived with crowds. When a Starbucks opened in Almaty's Mega Park mall on 18 December 2015, at least 200 people were in line by daylight.¹⁸ Coffee Boom, running since 2010, roasts its own beans and counts more than 130 кофехана (kofekhana, coffee houses) in 12 Kazakh cities, Russia and Uzbekistan.¹⁹

Growth is now faster in the capital: in 2025 coffee sales rose 16% in Almaty and 31% in Astana, filter coffee sales jumped 65%, 26% of a day's orders came between 08:00 and 10:00, and the average drink cost 1,310 ₸.⁵ Prices rose with bean costs, as Brazilian arabica cost 50–60% more in early 2025 than a year before.²⁰

Prices in lari and tenge, and ordering

Prices below are in Georgian lari (₾) and Kazakh tenge (₸), each with the year of its source. At the 2021 census, 83.7% of people in Kazakhstan could speak Russian and 80.1% Kazakh.²¹ The word for coffee is the same in both languages, кофе (kofe).²² In Georgian, coffee with milk is ყავა რძით (q̇ava rdzit), and sugarless is უშაქრო (ushakro).⁶²³

Each price is from the dated source in its row; the Tbilisi Starbucks figure was reported in July 2026.¹³