Long Berry in Kagoshima offers hand-roasted coffee – Café located in renovated barn

PUBLISHED Oct 18, 2021

Yonekura Musuzu, the owner

Two months have passed since Long Berry, a coffee shop that hand-roasts its own coffee beans, opened in Ijuincho, Hioki City, Kagoshima Prefecture.

The shop opened on July 8. Yonekura Musuzu, the owner, is originally from Hokkaido, and her husband, from Kagoshima. They had run a restaurant in Tokyo for 38 years but moved to Kagoshima to care for his parents. When she saw the barn next to the main house, she came up with the idea of opening a café there. She had learned how to hand-roast coffee from a coffee roaster while she was living in Tokyo. “Since I had a lot of time on my hands due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I honed my coffee roasting skills by myself in Kagoshima,” said Yonekura.

The couple renovated the barn themselves. “It took us six months to clean up and six months to renovate the barn, and we did everything by ourselves, from planing cedar with a planer to applying insulation,” she described. The main building is said to be a 90-year old house. The shop name comes from Mandheling G1 TP Long Berry, the first coffee beans that she roasted with perfect results while she was teaching herself.

The shop has one table and three counter seats. The lineup of coffee includes Mandheling G1 TP Long Berry (450 yen) with “refreshing bitterness and sweetness,” Mocha (450 yen) with “gorgeous and gentle flavor,” and Colombia (400 yen) with “well-balanced and easy-to-drink flavor.” Customers can purchase coffee beans, which start at 500 yen per 100 grams, and they are also available at the Long Berry online store.

It also offers homemade Chiffon Cake (380 yen) in flavors such as Plain and Black Tea, which change daily. This month, it started serving meals such as Spaghetti Napolitana (700 yen).

Yonekura added: “This place is surrounded by mountains and has no stores around. I thought it would be nice to have a place where neighbors can relax with a good cup of coffee. I’d like to hold music events at some point. I hope that this place will become a base for me to live and do things I love.”

Opening hours: 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Parking space for five cars available.

  • The exterior of the coffee shop Long Berry

  • Long Berry’s table seating area

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