Our story
A Nordic bakery, 8,000 km south.
Cardamom buns and cinnamon knots on a Sri Lankan surf coast. It shouldn't work. It's been working since we opened.
Where it began
A family bakery story, carried south.
Kāffi’s story begins in the 1930s in Svelvik, Norway, where our great-grandfather opened a small bakery.
After he passed, our great-grandmother—known to the family as Besta—and her children continued what he had started. They preserved more than recipes: a way of working built on care, patience and pride in every detail.
Some of the bakes served at Kāffi still come from those family recipes. Others are newer creations, where Nordic baking traditions meet ingredients and flavours found in Sri Lanka.
The Arugam Bay chapter
From Svelvik to Panama Road.
Today, that family tradition has found a home under the palms in Arugam Bay. The setting has changed—from a small Norwegian town to Sri Lanka’s east coast—but the approach remains familiar: bake carefully, serve generously and make people feel welcome.
Here, Nordic-style buns, cookies and cakes share the counter with Sri Lankan-grown coffee, properly whisked matcha and flavours shaped by the coast. Everything is made for slow mornings, post-surf stops and unhurried time around the table.
Arugam Bay is not a reinvention of the story. It is its next chapter.
The collision
Scandinavian baking, east coast heat.
The bake list reads Nordic — cardamom, cinnamon, oat, berry — and it comes out of an oven a few hundred metres from the point break. We bake every day: a range of healthy, naughty and diet-specific cakes, cookies and bars, to satisfy just about anyone.
Who we are
Women-owned, and it shows in the room.
Kāffi Arugam Bay is women-owned. The heart of Kāffi is the people behind the counter, and most of what people write about us is about them, not the coffee.
The bake
Vegan, gluten free, and daily.
Dietary options aren't an afterthought here. They're on the board, in the case and in the drinks list, every single day.
The coffee
Grown in Sri Lanka, pulled here.
Sri Lankan grown beans, pulled at the right temperature by a barista who cares about every cup. Melbourne regulars have told us it holds up.
4.8 From 861 reviews
★★★★★
Ranked #1 of 14 coffee and tea spots in Arugam Bay on Tripadvisor, and rated 4.8 across 131 reviews there.
Probably the best coffee in Arugam Bay.
Really amazing Sri Lankan grown coffee.
Amazing coffee, really the best I had in Sri Lanka.
One of the best cappuccinos, lattes or flat whites in Sri Lanka.