ARKHANGELSK: “I served in the armed forces in Armenia and the smell of coffee is everywhere there. People there drink coffee in all situations. It was there that I learned understood what coffee is,” said Alexander, 29, who was working the coffee-to-go kiosk he owns on the pedestrian street in Arkhangelsk.
Such freshly-brewed coffee kiosks can now be found in most major Russian cities, but three years ago they basically did not exist. Since then, they have sprung up like mushrooms after a rainstorm, to use a popular Russian expression, from Vladivostok to Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk to St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Alexander opened his in Arkhangelsk three years ago.
“I made a lot of mistakes – from the professionalism of the baristas to tge quality of the coffee,” he said when I asked why he didn’t yet expand. “You can’t give up,” he said. “He who gives up doesn’t achieve anything.”