Kalve was born from a latte. Not just any latte: the one Raimonds Selga, a translation student in Riga, drank for the first time at a café of the Lithuanian chain Caffeine, during a weekend in Vilnius with his girlfriend (now his wife). Until then, he had only drunk instant coffee, the cheapest he could find, under pressure from his student-residence flatmates. That sip sparked an obsession. Raimonds, who was heading for a career translating Russian and English into Latvian, realised he could not bear to spend his life alone behind a screen. He ordered coffee samples from various roasters, bought an entry-level espresso machine and a grinder, then wrote a business plan. With his girlfriend, he started making coffee at events from the boot of his car, convinced he knew everything without ever having taken a single barista course. The venture did not last. But it was while looking for milk jugs for his little mobile business that Raimonds crossed paths with Gatis Zēmanis, a salesman at a coffee equipment distributor. That was also where he saw his first La Marzocco. Gatis later hired him as a salesman at his company, where Raimonds spent four years selling, training and gradually taking charge of coffee quality. When Gatis left the company, Raimonds soon followed. Together, with a third partner, Jānis Andersons, they laid the foundations of Kalve.
A Garage in Riga, Then the World
In 2017, the first roasting trials took place on an Ikawa in Gatis's kitchen, then on a small 2kg roaster set up in his garage. The idea: experiment, make mistakes and learn before launching for real. The official launch came in January 2019, with an additional 15kg roaster and around 400kg roasted a month. That same year, Kalve opened its first coffee shop in Riga and took second place at the international Roast Masters competition. In 2025, the team went back and won first place.
The Latvian context explains a lot about Kalve's path. Latvia, a country of two million people that emerged from the Soviet era barely thirty years ago, had no developed coffee culture. Supermarkets sold pre-ground or instant coffee. On the specialty side, the choice came down to two extremes: a very dark Italian blend or lightly roasted Ethiopian coffees. Gatis, Raimonds and Jānis wanted to bridge that gap and make specialty coffee accessible to everyone, from students to busy professionals. At Kalve, this ambition to democratise is not a slogan: it shapes their range, their communication and their green coffee buying policy.
Buying Profiles, Not Origins
Kalve's sourcing philosophy fits into one of Raimonds' phrases: "We buy profiles, not origins." The team favours high-solubility coffees, which are easier to work with and extract evenly, whether they come from Ethiopia, Brazil or El Salvador. All the green coffees they buy score at least 82 points. Team members hold the Q Arabica Grader certification, which allows them to assess and score green and roasted coffees to international standards. The approach aims to be both rigorous (driven by data and quality control protocols) and sensitive (guided by curiosity about flavour). Among the coffees that have marked Kalve's journey, a red honey Pacamara from the Los Pirineos farm in El Salvador, grown by fifth-generation farmer Diego Baraona, was selected for The Coffeevine's April 2022 box. Raimonds saw in it a parallel with his own ambition: to build something his children might take over one day.
Kalve's growth since 2019 has been spectacular. Revenue went from 350,000 euros in the first year to 2.49 million in 2023, with 83 tonnes of coffee sold (up 25% on 2022). The roastery, based since 2021 in Jaunmārupe on the outskirts of Riga, has a production capacity of 60,000kg a month and supplies hotels, restaurants and B2B customers in Latvia, Poland, Estonia and Germany. The company also distributes Victoria Arduino and Nuova Simonelli machines as well as Eureka grinders. In 2023, Kalve became the first Latvian company to be B Corp certified. At the end of 2024, a stock market listing raised 1.16 million euros to fund new coffee shops in Estonia, Lithuania and, from 2025, France. With more than 108 employees, four cafés and a bakery in Riga, Kalve is no longer two friends' garage project. But the original intention, making specialty coffee a given in a country that barely had any, remains the common thread in everything they do.
