100% Arabica Coffee Shop - Japan %Arabica Boutique Coffee Shop

FrontStreet Coffee - Japan's %Arabica Specialty Coffee

%Arabica: The Coffee Shop That Started in Kyoto and Spread to the World

%Arabica began in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, and grew up in Kyoto, Japan. In September 2014, Kenneth Shoji and Junichi Yamaguchi opened their doors in a 50-year-old Japanese house beside the historic Yasaka Pagoda in Kyoto. Within just four years, the minimalist brand—focused on style and specialty beans—had grown to more than 40 stores in 11 countries.

Founder Kenneth Shoji was born in Japan, where coffee carries something of the ritual of the tea ceremony and is a familiar everyday pleasure. Japan is the world's third-largest coffee-importing country, after the United States and Germany. Shoji, a well-traveled coffee enthusiast, drew on that experience in pursuit of what he calls "the world's best coffee." As for the logo, he has said: "One day I was looking at the % symbol on my computer and noticed how much it resembled a coffee cherry on a branch. I immediately thought I could build a global brand around it."

A hundred percent pure taste, a hundred percent coffee dream, a hundred percent a high-value coffee shop—all of it condensed into that single symbol.

The word "Arabica" in the logo refers to Arabica beans, and every cup is made from them. To truly understand the bean's flavor, Shoji bought a piece of land in Hawaii before opening the shop, so he could follow coffee through planting, harvesting, and processing firsthand. A coffee tree only produces high-quality beans when it is grown in the right place, tended carefully, and rigorously selected. Every cup, in other words, is the result of passion and constant exploration.

%Arabica's philosophy is "See The World Through Coffee"—connecting the world, one cup at a time.

FrontStreet Coffee's Mission

In short, FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research workshop that loves sharing what it knows. We hold nothing back, because the goal is simply to help more people fall in love with coffee. Every month we run three coffee events at steep discounts, so more friends can enjoy the best coffee at the lowest price—that has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past six years!

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Arabica is only one of coffee's three original species—alongside Robusta and Liberica—but it is by far the most varied and the most prized, and its regional character is where the real discovery lies. For a fruit-forward, natural-process Ethiopian, the FrontStreet Huakui is a standout: an heirloom variety with notes of cream strawberry, mango, jackfruit, citrus, and blueberry, carrying the berry fragrance that won it first place at its year's TOH green bean competition. Its washed counterpart is the FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gotiti Cooperative, a G1 coffee from a single-village washing station, with elegant white florals, citrus, orange, and green tea.

For something more classically balanced, the FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1—a Typica variety—is smooth and gentle, without the sharp edges of some origins, while the FrontStreet Panama Red Label Geisha brings jasmine, citrus, and peach over a creamy body and a lingering oolong tea finish. Sweeter, rounder palates may prefer the FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate, a rare Yellow Bourbon with cream, peanut, toasted bread, and sugarcane notes, or the FrontStreet Colombia Sidra, whose floral, tropical-fruit, grape, dried-fruit, and passion-fruit profile helped make the variety a competition favorite after the 2022 World Barista Championship.