Calendar Coffee

Calendar Coffee, an Irish roastery based on the west coast, brings to the cup what most roasters overlook—seasonality. Zarah Lawless and Daniel Boobier founded Calendar Coffee in Galway in 2018 with a simple belief: coffee tastes best when treated like a fresh harvest, not like a commodity off the shelf.

Calendar Coffee is based on an idea its founders observed while working together at the London roastery Workshop Coffee—the most flavorful coffees were almost always the ones that had just been harvested. Yet the harvest date was rarely listed on the bags. Zarah and Dan decided to change that. The name “Calendar” is no coincidence—it refers directly to the annual harvest cycle in various growing regions. The roastery rotates its selection according to the season and releases a freshly roasted batch every week. One week it might be a washed lot from Nyeri, Kenya; the next week, a natural from Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

Zarah, a Galway native with a background in punk music, sold her synthesizers to help finance the startup. Dan, a trained biologist with a passion for gastronomy, is in charge of sourcing, roasting, and quality control. Together, they have over twenty years of experience in the coffee industry. In 2017, they moved from London to Galway, where they built their roastery in a former computer repair shop. Calendar Coffee quickly gained international recognition—in 2023, the Roastful platform ranked it among the world’s top three roasteries, making it the only Irish brand in the top ten.

In addition to quality in the cup, sustainability is essential for Calendar Coffee. The roastery is a member of the 1% for the Planet initiative, meaning one percent of sales goes to support environmental projects. Together with the Irish organization Hometree, they are planting native trees in County Clare to offset the carbon footprint from coffee transportation. They supply coffee to their wholesale partners in reusable containers to reduce single-use plastics. Calendar Coffee’s goal is not just great coffee—but building a roastery where farmers are profitable and the business operates in harmony with the planet.