What does it take to become the world’s best roaster?

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Key takeaways

• Competition is intensifying among coffee roasters striving to differentiate themselves through quality and recognition.
• International competitions like the Global Coffee Awards have become key benchmarks.
• Lithuania’s Huracán Coffee won the 2025 Global Coffee Awards World Championship, competing against roasters from across Europe, the US and Canada, and coffee-producing countries.
• Becoming the world’s best roaster is not about a single great coffee but about building consistent systems across sourcing, cupping, roasting, quality control, and brewing.

Specialty coffee commands premium prices and premium expectations. As more roasters open worldwide, including in fast-growing emerging markets across Asia and the Baltics, the question of how to stand out has never been more pressing. 

For some roasters, competitions have become the answer: a public, internationally recognised measure of whether your quality standards can hold up anywhere in the world. 

“Coffee can be a very local business,” says Vytautas Kratulis, founder of Huracán Coffee, a Lithuanian specialty coffee roaster that won the 2025 Global Coffee Awards World Championship, receiving the title of World’s Best Roaster. 

“We all develop our own habits, assumptions, and understanding of quality, but competitions place your work in a much wider conversation,” he adds. “They allow you to compare your coffees, decisions, and standards against some of the best roasters in the world.”

But the path to becoming the world’s best roaster begins long before competing. It starts with quality at every level of the supply chain, which makes collaboration with trusted partners even more essential.

You may also like our article on how roasters can drive real innovation in specialty coffee.

The push for excellence in specialty coffee

Specialty coffee has always been marketed on the promise of quality above all else. Naturally, this attracts consumers willing to pay more and roasters who must continually work harder. As the market matures and the number of roasters globally continues to grow, the competition for recognition intensifies.

Roasting competitions have expanded well beyond regional events. Today, global competitions like the Global Coffee Awards (GCA) place roasters from majority coffee-consuming markets against those from coffee-producing countries, creating an international benchmark for roasting excellence.

The 2025 GCA circuit drew more than 2,000 coffee samples submitted from over 125 countries. Regional heats spanned Europe, the US and Canada, and coffee-producing nations, before 30 finalists from 16 countries competed at the World Championship in El Salvador.

Among the finalists was Huracán Coffee, a specialty roaster from Vilnius, Lithuania, which went on to take the title of World’s Best Roaster. The Huracán team recently celebrated their win at a World of Coffee Brussels party, reinforcing that their success has always been as much about community as it is about quality.

“Competitions raise standards,” says Vytautas. “Preparation forces you to look more closely, question assumptions, and refine details that might otherwise go unnoticed.

“The recognition matters too. Not because of trophies, but because it tells your team, customers, and community that your work can compete at the highest level.”

The best roasters consistently prioritise quality

So what actually distinguishes the world’s best roaster from the rest? Ultimately, quality must be the top priority at every level of the supply chain.

Huracán Coffee’s win at the 2025 Global Coffee Awards demonstrates this, underscoring the roaster’s nearly three decades of investment in sourcing, cupping, roasting, quality control, and brewing.

“The world’s best roaster is not a person, but a system,” says Vytautas. “What people see is the coffee, but they don’t see the years behind it. Relationships with producers, trusted sourcing partners, quality control, logistics, and roasting. Hundreds of decisions are made by different people, often long before the coffee reaches the roaster.”

This framing matters for any roaster asking what excellence requires. It extends well beyond roasting skill into every decision along the supply chain, from the relationship with the producer through to how the final cup is calibrated for different brewing methods.

“Exceptional coffees can be found once,” Vytautas says. “Building an organisation that consistently recognises, understands, develops, and presents them at the highest level is much harder.”

Competitions themselves play a role in raising these standards. “Like a great barista championship, winning a roasting competition rarely stays with one competitor,” Vytautas adds. “It lifts the performance of an entire team, and eventually shows up behind the counter.”

The title of “best roaster” is a collaborative effort

Winning international roasting competitions begins long before a roaster submits an application. Before anything, it starts with working closely with producers.

Huracán Coffee was founded in 1999, making it Lithuania’s first specialty coffee roaster. The company has spent nearly three decades building the relationships and knowledge that underpin its reputation. Vytautas has served as a juror at the Cup of Excellence, an experience that has shaped the brand’s coffee sourcing.

“For nearly 30 years, we have focused on the same question: How do we make better coffee tomorrow than we made today? Winning the GCA allowed us to tell that story to a much wider audience,” Vytautas says.

The story is, at its core, a collaborative one. The coffees that reached the finals were not the work of Huracán alone, but of the farmers and quality control teams who grew and prepared them. 

“One of the things I appreciate most about the GCA is that it creates a shared moment between producer and roaster,” Vytautas says. “A competition may recognise a roaster, but both are invested in the same coffee, and both want to see it succeed.”

For roasters building toward this level of recognition, the lesson from Huracán’s journey is consistent: the title of “world’s best roaster” is not claimed through a single standout performance. It’s earned across the supply chain, year after year, through trust that takes time to build and transparency to maintain.

“The longer I work in coffee, the more I believe that quality is rarely the work of a single individual,” Vytautas tells me. “It’s usually the result of many people moving in the same direction.”

Roasting excellence demands a long-term commitment to quality that spans the entire supply chain, from the producer to the final cup. For roasters who want to compete at the highest level, the path forward requires treating every link in the chain with the same level of discipline, dedication, and intention.

As Vytautas puts it: “Becoming the world’s best roaster is not about producing one great coffee. It is about building a system capable of doing it again tomorrow.”

Enjoyed this? Then read our article on whether brand partnerships always help roasters grow.

Roasting competition FAQs

Why do roasters enter international coffee competitions?
Competitions place a roaster’s work alongside the best in the world, offering an objective benchmark of quality. They force teams to question assumptions, refine details, and prove their standards hold up globally.

What actually makes a roaster the world’s best?
Consistency across the entire supply chain matters more than a single great coffee. The best roaster is a system, not a person, built on sourcing relationships, quality control, and roasting decisions made by many people over years.

Is winning a roasting competition a solo achievement?
No. Huracán Coffee’s win at the Global Coffee Awards reflected decades of collaboration with producers and quality control teams. Founder Vytautas sees competitions as a shared moment between roaster and producer, with both invested in the success of the same coffee.

Photo credits: Huracán Coffee

Perfect Daily Grind

Please note: Huracán Coffee is a sponsor of Perfect Daily Grind.

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