Unpacking Coffee with Kandace and Ray: Trunk Coffee of Japan

Trunk Coffee. Photo courtesy of Needmore Designs.

This week’s Unpacking Coffee unpacks Trunk Coffee, a 1.5-year-old coffee bar and Probat-centered roastery in Nagoya, Japan, co-owned by Yasuo Suzuki and Kiyohito Tanaka.

The bar and brand themselves are heavily influenced by Scandanavian design and culture, although as Kandace points out, there’s something uniquely Japanese about the company’s bright, cheery aesthetic, which foregoes elements like modern-industrial brick walls for arrays of colors reflected in interior surface materials, service ware and coffee packaging.

Kandace and Ray briefly chat with Richard Sandlin, general manager of Royal Coffee’s latest project The Crown. Sandlin, who spent years living, working and gigging in bands around Tokyo, provides some insight into Japanese coffee culture, which he suggests is centered around one word: atmosphere.

Unpacking Coffee is a weekly show discovering new coffee roasters one episode at a time led by Kandace and Ray of the Portland-based studio Needmore Designs, which specializes in coffee, wine and lifestyle brands.