Atlanta Coffee Shops: The Atlanta Coffee Scene

Recently Angle partnered with and sponsored Atlanta Coffee Shops, an exceptional publication that covers specialty coffee scene in Atlanta and beyond. ACS is a beacon for coffee lovers, documenting Atlanta's diverse coffee landscape in meticulous detail, with gorgeous photography.

Through our sponsorship we got to know the founder of ACS, Eugene, and became fascinated by his story, the ACS journey, Atlanta's coffee scene, and his unique insights into the cafe experience. Eugene has covered over 300 cafes in the Atlanta Area and beyond, so his perspective is unlike any other. We're sharing his story and insights in three parts:

1. Origin & Journey

‍2. Atlanta's Coffee Scene

3. ACS on Cafe Experience & Memberships

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What makes Atlanta’s coffee scene unique?

I think Atlanta’s coffee scene is unique for its incredible diversity – there are coffee shops that cater to all kinds of environments (as a recent guest post on ACS highlighted).

What’s also interesting to me is that Atlanta is a fairly spread-out city, and there are some 200+ local/independent coffee shops in the greater metro Atlanta area. With exception of a few densely populated suburbs or neighborhoods, every coffee shop has a chance to be the local “go-to” neighborhood spot for Atlantans. It’s also been interesting to see the shift of people in appreciating quality/specialty coffee who may not have paid much attention to coffee in the past (for example, those individuals that went to Starbucks and considered their offerings the peak of a quality coffee experience).

Atlanta is a relatively big city, but the specialty coffee scene seems tight-knit. With events picking up last year and into this year, there are a lot of familiar faces in the industry.

How has it evolved in the years since you started ACS?

I think the expansion has been in the number of local coffee shops, as well as a general improvement in quality of coffee from reputable roasters. I think customers have begun to gravitate to those coffee shops that have well-curated coffee on drip or espresso. I think there is also a nice proliferation of specialty coffee pop-ups and vendors who are doing interesting things in the Atlanta coffee scene but who may not necessarily own a retail storefront. I try to highlight those kinds of events on the curated events page. Coffee carts have also seen a rise as a business in Atlanta.

You cover specialty coffee shops far beyond Atlanta, what other cities/regions stand out?

A lot of places come to mind in terms of amazing coffee shops / coffee scenes. In 2019, I had the chance to travel for about twenty days to Japan, and it was a fantastic experience. I ended up visiting about twenty-five coffee shops during this trip, and came away with incredible memories. I wrote about a master at his craft at a coffee shop in Kyoto. I loved learning about Weekenders Coffee, another really cool coffee shop in Kyoto.

Whenever I get back to New York City, I continue my exploration of the coffee scene there (which is daunting because there are just so many amazing coffee shops there). From smaller cities visited, I think Greenville, SC has an amazing coffee scene (Due South, Methodical, Flying Fox, and several others are notable highlights).