☕️ 📊 Berlin Mitte Coffee Price Map & Coffee-As-Data

I Tracked Flat White Prices in Berlin-Mitte So You Don’t Have To

Constanze Ulreich

Apr 22, 2025

Methodology (aka how I got here)

One year.
Too many flat whites.
VCs. Founders. Operators. People I actually like.

Just enough “quick-catch-up” to build a complete, unsolicited coffee price map of Berlin-Mitte.

You’re welcome.

Data or It Didn’t Happen

The current range runs from €3.00 to €5.50.
That’s a €2.50 spread for what is, fundamentally, espresso and milk.
Ben Rahim tops the list at €5.50. For that price, I want the barista to ask how I’m really doing.
LAP Coffee: A shocking €3.00 — LAP isn’t playing the same game, and we’ll get to that.

The sweet spot is between €4.20 and €4.50, a zone I call:

“I like coffee, but I also like rent.”

Special Mentions ✨

Some cafés deserve more than a data point:

Ben Rahim

Yes, the price is insane. But so is the coffee.
The best part? There’s no WiFi or internet connection.
Watch a VC boy slowly unravel as his partner’s urgent WhatsApps fail to come through and he's forced to make eye contact.

The Barn

The café is good, yes. But the carrot cake is life altering.

Café Neundrei

Still traumatised — not the café’s fault.
A VC boy hijacked my flat white to deliver a 30-minute monologue on the biography of Alexander the Great after I mentioned I like books.
He used the words “strategic empire-building.”

Sant Buena

Newcomer on the block.
A quiet gem. Warm sun.
Go now, before someone hosts a startup brunch there.

Let’s talk about the €3.00 elephant in the room.

LAP is scaling like a tech company that happens to serve coffee.

How LAP is playing the game differently:

💸 Low price, high volume

LAP isn't chasing margin per cup — they're going for habit and frequency.
It’s designed for daily drinkers.
It’s coffee as infrastructure, not indulgence.

📱 Zero ad budget — maximum reach

They spend close to nothing on traditional marketing.
Their cafés are the brand: minimalist, Instagrammable, TikTok-friendly.
Their online presence: Built on organic Gen Z magnetism.
No glossy campaigns — just good design, good prices, and content that feels native.

🧊 Seasonal products = constant relevance

From cold foam oat brews to winter-spice flat whites, LAP rotates its menu to keep things fresh — and feed the feed.
Think of it as retail logic, applied to coffee.

🧠 The data flywheel

LAP is quietly collecting behavior:

Your usual order
Your visit patterns
Your time of day
Your return frequency

Which means:
→ This isn’t just a coffee shop.
→ It’s a living dashboard of urban consumption.

🧩 Operationally lean = built for scale

Small footprint cafés. Simple menus. Efficient staff flow.
LAP is designed to be repeatable, not artisanal.
And they just raised more VC money, including international capital.
That’s not for another espresso machine — that’s for growth.

Next stop: Munich.

LAP just opened in Munich — right at the same time as Plex Coffee, another design-forward, Gen Z–coded competitor.

Two venture-backed cafés.
Same city. Similar demographic.

The coffee race is on.

And it’s not about who makes the best espresso.
It’s about who owns the habit.

Love Letter to a €5 Habit

Do I love coffee? Absolutely. Do I sometimes spend €5.00 on one and feel absolutely fine about it? Also yes. Do I know it’s probably feeding someone’s CRM dashboard? I do.

Let them have the data. I’ll take the joy.

— Constanze