Labesera

Freshly roasted coffee, made simple.

Client: Labesera
Our role: Co-founders. Product and industrial design, mechanical and electronics engineering, interface design, manufacturing and supply chain.
Tags: Hardware, Consumer & home, Digital & AI

Labesera coffee roaster in matt black on a white kitchen counter, with green beans and Labesera coffee pouches beside it

Coffee is at its best in the days after it is roasted, yet most of what we drink was roasted weeks or months earlier. Roasting well has always needed skill, time and equipment built for professionals. Labesera brings a roaster to the kitchen counter that anyone can use, and that roasts with the consistency of a specialist.

The challenge

A good roast is a careful balance of heat, airflow and movement, held steady for every bean in the batch. Doing that inside a compact, quiet, safe appliance means managing high temperatures and chaff in a small space, at a price people will pay for a kitchen product. The roaster also had to make the process feel effortless, so that choosing a roast is as simple as choosing a coffee.

Early Labesera interface concepts exploring screen, dial and start button layouts for the roaster control panel

Early Labesera architecture options comparing roasting chamber, heating element and fan layouts

What we did

Labesera roaster on a kitchen counter between a coffee grinder and an espresso machine

Design

A calm, compact object that belongs in the kitchen. Every part you touch was designed to be simple to understand, from loading the beans to removing and emptying the chaff basket.

Engineering

We engineered the heating, airflow and agitation that keep beans moving for an even roast. With our UK supplier we matched each plastic part to its real temperature profile instead of its peak, which opened up lower-cost, high-performance materials such as glass-filled nylon and PPA in place of PEEK.

Labesera control panel with screen, espresso to filter dial and start button, beside pouches and dark, light and green coffee beans

Interface

The roaster recognises each pouch of green coffee over NFC and loads the right roast profile automatically. A small landscape screen, cream type on black, lets you choose a roast for espresso or filter and follow every stage of the roast. The system checks the chaff basket before starting, warns early and always brings the roast to a safe stop if something is wrong.

Manufacturing

We visited and audited seven manufacturers in China and partnered with a top-tier factory that also builds for established global brands. We developed the tooling with our partners and set up a supply chain across the UK and China.

factories audited in China to find the right manufacturing partner