Motmot coffee roasters in Brno: from a frying pan to 30 tonnes a year

When brothers Petr and Pavel Klein opened the Motmot roastery in Brno, only two people came in on the first day: an acquaintance they had talked into it and a postwoman who had wandered in by mistake. Takings came to exactly 300 crowns. Today 30 tonnes of coffee a year pass through their roastery, and last year’s turnover exceeded 30 million crowns.

It all began with a trip to a coffee plantation in Nicaragua that they had found online. The brothers brought back three kilograms of green beans. They had no idea how to roast coffee and no equipment, and at home they drank instant “3-in-1”. They simply tipped the first batch into an Ikea frying pan. “It looked like a Dalmatian, and I had never tasted a nastier coffee in my life,” Petr Klein recalls with a laugh. The brothers did not give up and founded the Motmot brand.

The start was not free of mishaps either: they mistakenly scheduled the grand opening for the day before a public holiday, and the buzz never came. Still, the company gradually gained momentum. The brothers learned the craft by trial and error, expanded production and built up a network of corporate and retail customers.

But while the product was being polished to perfection in the roastery, marketing lagged behind. “We were learning to roast, we had a quality product, but we didn’t know how to tell the world about it. We stayed in production for a long time, and within the old brand framework there was almost nowhere left to grow,” Petr Klein admits.

The turning point came when Petr signed up for a marketing education programme run by Tomáš Pohl, who owns a marketing agency. He saw potential in Motmot and went from teacher to third co-owner and marketing director. “I decided that people will always need good coffee. I spend most of the money I earn on my mortgage, food and coffee myself,” Pohl jokes.

Together they carried out a rebrand: new colours and packaging design, a new online shop, compostable capsules and a “Coffee Dating” gift set that helps you find your own taste profile without complicated terminology. The focus is on ordinary people rather than coffee snobs: if you want to add syrup or ice to your coffee, go ahead.

The result was visible at once: for the first time in the company’s history, firms, hotels and cafés approach them on their own because they like the visual style and presentation. “The bean stayed the same, but the packaging sells,” Pohl says. Today more than 8,000 cups of coffee are made from Motmot beans every day.