Kontakt: lapcoffeescheisse@riseup.net
Recommended starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeZuFI-R8JU (ZDF Trasherchiert, 12 minutes)
For those with patience: Lap Coffee founder and CEO Ralph Hage chats with his investment partner Roman Hirsch (who also invested in Lap Coffee) about the strategies and goals behind the founding of “Lap Coffee”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2cpMInznE
What is Lap Coffee?
Lap Coffee is a new coffee chain that has been around for about two years and is aiming for rapid growth. Lap focuses on offering reasonably priced coffee in relatively small spaces in trendy neighborhoods. The concept is geared towards a young, urban target group. In many branches, communication with staff takes place exclusively in English. Orders can be placed online while on the go, and payment is only possible digitally.
Alongside the coffee sales, Lap Coffee is also trying to build a community. This is primarily done online, and also partly through events in the branches, for example, in collaboration with companies like Adidas and the music industry.
Currently (as of October 2025), there are fifteen branches in Berlin, three in Munich, and one in Hamburg. In Berlin, branches are primarily located in Prenzlauer Berg (Oderberger Str. 53, Schönhauser Allee 75, Schönhauser Allee 176, Rykestr. 11, Raumerstr. 35, Kastanienallee 47) and Kreuzberg (Falkensteinstr. 5, Adalbertstr. 91, Graefestr. 19). Further branches can be found in Friedrichshain (Krossener Str. 21), Neukölln (Karl Marx Str. 101), Mitte (Rosentaler Str. 62), Schöneberg (Akazienstr. 3a), Charlottenburg (Kantstr. 23), and Wilmersdorf (Uhlandstr. 30).
Who is behind Lap Coffee?
The founders of LAP Coffee are Tonalli Arreola and Ralph Hage. Arreola previously worked for the delivery service Flink. In addition to Flink, Arreola was, or is, involved with Lime, a company known for its e-scooter rental service. Hage previously worked for companies including Red Bull and Delivero Hero. He was also one of the founders of the delivery service Yababa, which went bankrupt in 2023.
Lap Coffee is backed not only by various individual investors but also by several multi-billion-dollar investment funds. Of particular interest is HV Capital, a leading investor in the military drone manufacturer Quantum Systems, along with Thiel Capital (an investment firm owned by the far-right extremist Peter Thiel, known, among other things, for the Palantir surveillance software).
What are Lap Coffee’s plans?
According to an investment firm involved in the company, Lap Coffee is planning an “aggressive expansion.” They intend to open 100 branches in Germany by the end of next year. But if the founders and investors have their way, this is just the beginning. CEO Hage cites Red Bull as a major role model.
On the one hand, Lap Coffee plans to be a pioneer in the automation of food service offerings. On the other hand, they intend to build a brand around their branches, which will then be active primarily online and extend beyond coffee. The customer base is to be expanded, and existing customers will be offered a wider range of products.
The goal of all these activities is, of course, a substantial return on investment. Presumably, the founders and investors are speculating that their “aggressive expansion” will allow the Lap Coffee brand to grow rapidly, with the aim of later selling it on at a higher price.
We cannot comment on the extent to which Lap Coffee is actively engaging in price dumping to fuel its expansion. The alleged income and expenditure calculation for each coffee sold, presented by Lap, definitely has significant gaps.
What is the “Lap Community” all about?
A central component of Lap’s communication strategy is the attempt to build a so-called “community,” that is, to attract people who understand the consumption of Lap Coffee as part of a trendy lifestyle and are willing to share it on social media platforms like Instagram. For this purpose, so-called “events” are organized, for example, in collaboration with fashion brands like Adidas. Overall, the project to give Lap Coffee a positive image thru a “community” seems to be rather sluggish. Apparently, Lap has so far relied on people paid by Lap or financially connected to Lap to rave about how great Lap Coffee is on social media, pretending to be private individuals. Criticism of Lap Coffee is, of course, not well received in the attempt to build a positive image. Accordingly, Lap is quite aggressive in dealing with criticism that could disturb the beautiful facade. Lap apparently systematically deletes critical reviews online and does not seem to shy away from legal threats against the authors of critical comments. With everything that Lap Coffee says, it is generally worth taking a close look. For example, Lap Coffee’s CEO likes to talk to the press about the “few cafés” in question, while simultaneously promising investors “aggressive expansion.”
Why is Lap Coffee a big piece of crap?
Lap benefits from displacement and drives it forward.
Even a highly capitalist commercial player, Lap Coffee is primarily drawn to trendy, mostly formerly or still alternative neighborhoods due to its image and “community” strategy. So not at Friedrichstraße or Zoo stations, but in Kastanienallee in Prenzlauer Berg, Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain or Wrangelkiez in Kreuzberg.
Supported by investors and funds with almost unlimited financial resources, high rents are not a problem for Lap Coffee. Accordingly, Lap Coffee branches are also happy to move into spaces that previous users had to abandon due to skyrocketing commercial rents (such as Café Tres in Kreuzberg, Imbiss Al Ghazali in Friedrichshain). With this, Lap Coffee sets a new standard for the notoriously completely unregulated commercial rents in areas where, in recent years, many long-established, neighborhood-oriented shops of all kinds have had to close down. The opening of a Lap branch should make all neighboring shops sit up and take notice: Is the landlord perhaps going to be at the door with the next rent increase soon, because, as seen with Lap, significantly higher prices can apparently be enforced?
Lap Coffee causes higher coffee prices
By now, coffee prices are often high overall even in formerly alternative districts. The background is often, in addition to generally rising prices and wages, also and above all the skyrocketing commercial rents. From many cafés where we regularly hang out, we know that they would like to offer cheaper coffee as well, but they can no longer afford to do so due to the increased commercial rents.
On the one hand, Lap Coffee now offers relatively inexpensive coffee, which generally leads to massive declines in sales for neighboring cafés. On the other hand, Lap drives up rents further and may force neighboring cafés to raise their prices even more – or give up and close down.
Lap stands for the city for corporations, not for the city for people.
What connects real estate companies like Vonovia with chains like Lap Coffee? They have only one goal, namely maximum profit, and they want to make this profit with and in the city.
Lap fits perfectly into the capitalist city. Many people have hardly any money left because the high rent is so high, and they prefer to drink an affordable Lap Coffee. Lap Coffee, on the other hand, is willing to pay completely inflated commercial rents, which in turn pleases real estate companies and property owners.
We want a city for people, not for corporations. We finally need affordable rents and affordable, good housing for all people. Then people will also have more money left over and will no longer have to put a large or the largest part of their income into rent, thus throwing it into the maw of greedy corporations or landlords.
And with commercial rents regulated in line with residential rents – and therefore lower – Lap would also not be able to get a foothold. Who would want to have something like Lap, if an affordable commercial rent could be paid by a nice, small neighborhood cafe?
A city for the people who live in it and not for the profit interests of corporations and investment funds: This is what we will have to enforce against both real estate corporations and chains like Lap.
The Lap founders stand for exploitation and union busting.
What do the companies where the Lap founders previously held executive positions (Flink and Lime, Delivero Hero and Red Bull) have in common? They are united in their brutal approach to all attempts by employes to organize themselves in order to achieve better working conditions and appropriate wages. In classic “union busting” fashion, efforts are being made to prevent the establishment of works councils by any means necessary.
At Red Bull, for example, which Lap CEO Hage holds up as the great role model, 250 employes were once quickly dismissed to prevent the establishment of a works council.
From the perspective of capital, this also seems sensible: miserable wages and poor working conditions lead, at least in the short term, to high profits. There are no reasons to assume that the founders of Lap-Coffee have a different attitude toward works councils and collective wages than the previous projects and major role models they have been involved with.
Lap is shit for the environment.
Lap Coffee is completely geared toward single-use plastic tableware. The fact that there are theoretically reusable cups is just a pure alibi. All the people who live near Lap branches are familiar with the plastic waste caused by Lap on the streets and in parks.
All this community talk is pure nonsense.
Especially disgusting is the whole “community” talk from Lap Coffee, a company that is solely focused on profit and generating as much revenue as possible from individual customers. “With 100 stores, we can acquire long-term relationships with millions of happy customers…” What we want to do over time is expand the portfolio of services and products even beyond coffee… We can, of course, monetize a lot more from existing customers…
To build this “community” and increase overall and per-customer sales, the data collected thru a Lap App, among other sources, is being used aggressively.
Lap takes a tough stance against criticism.
They invoke the free market and a free society, but themselves act ruthlessly against criticism. Maybe they have to do that if they want to grow primarily thru an image bubble, where criticism threatens to undermine the beautiful facade and expose the grim reality of profit maximization. If Lap is personally resorting to legal threats against criticism here, that’s pretty extreme: the company supported by millions from investors threatening a furious local resident with legal action over their criticism on Google…
We see: There are plenty of reasons to find Lap Coffee really shitty. The list could go on.