Sam Coffee Roasters at 15 | Back in Motion

Over the past year, there were a total of 86 days when Sam Coffee Roasters' spaces could not welcome our guests.

On days when we were concerned about our colleagues' journeys to and from work and their safety, and on days when our doors were open but the rhythm of work was no longer the same, our team remained our first priority. With our team behind us, we prepared to start again each time, so we could once more welcome our guests.

From September 23, 2025, to September 22, 2026, we served more than 890,000 items. During the same period, we welcomed 795,340 guests in person and recorded and dispatched 52,795 successful online orders.

In Esfand 1404 (February–March 2026), the number of items sold fell from nearly 76,000 the previous month to around 33,000. From Farvardin through Khordad 1405 (March–June 2026), that figure rose for three consecutive months, passing 80,000 again in Khordad.

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Some things remained familiar in our guests' choices. Of the more than 340,000 coffee-based drinks served, over a third were lattes and Americanos made with Sam's signature blend. In Tir and Mordad 1405 (June–August 2026), the iced versions of those two drinks took the top two spots. Black tea remained among our five best-selling products throughout all twelve months. In the kitchen, we added three new dishes and three seasonal or occasion-specific items to the menu, while the chicken pesto sandwich appeared among our bestsellers every month of the year.

Behind that familiar cup, sourcing coffee had become more difficult. From the beginning of Mehr 1404 (September 2025) to the beginning of Shahrivar 1405 (August 2026), the dollar exchange rate rose by approximately 81%. This meant that by Shahrivar, buying the same US dollar required roughly 1.8 times as many rials as it had at the start of Mehr 1404. Because a large share of our sourcing costs depends on foreign currency, we had to set aside more rials for our next purchase of coffee beans. At the same time, shortages of green coffee and import difficulties made the timing and cost of each purchase more uncertain.

Sam Coffee Roasters' gross sales in rials rose by 57.8% compared with the corresponding previous period, while the dollar exchange rate rose by 81%. Yet the dollar equivalent of our sales fell by around 15.9%.

For this comparison, we converted each month's sales using the dollar exchange rate on the first day of that month. In nine of the twelve months, sales expressed in dollars were lower than in the corresponding month of the previous year. Meanwhile, our guests were facing higher living costs, and for some, buying coffee every day was no longer as easy to prioritize as before. Our pricing decisions had to account for both sides. We needed to preserve our ability to purchase the next supply of ingredients, while ensuring that guests could continue to rely on the quality of coffee and hospitality they know from Sam.

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During this period, Sam's roastery sourced approximately 23 to 24 metric tons of green coffee from nine countries. Across 52 sensory and evaluation sessions, we assessed 1,040 coffee samples. We introduced 14 new coffees, and 17 coffee offerings were served across Sam's spaces. Much of the work behind every cup happens here: selecting beans, testing roasting approaches, and tasting again.

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The changes of the year were tangible for our team, too. When three of Sam's spaces in Tehran closed, the colleagues who worked there moved to other spaces. In Shiraz, we hired 19 new colleagues to open our new space. By September 22, 2026, 138 people were working at Sam.

Over the year, our human resources team received 1,296 résumés and conducted 330 job interviews. During that time, 100 new colleagues joined Sam.

We also recorded 18 promotions and 17 internal transfers. We held 38 training courses totaling 106 hours, attended by 94 colleagues. The subjects ranged from coffee and brewing to hospitality, communication, organizational culture, and professional skills. Within our bar team, we added junior and bar supervisor roles to the career path, making the next step clearer for colleagues in this area.

Our barista grading program progressed from practicing espresso extraction and milk preparation to V60 brewing and writing recipes for creative drinks. In the Shahrivar session, we asked baristas to use Sam's signature blend to prepare an espresso and another drink using their own settings. The results surprised us. The grading program awarded 13 specialist certificates. You can see the outcome of these exercises behind the bar, when a barista assesses the taste of a coffee and adjusts the extraction accordingly, helping guests better understand the flavors in their cups.

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Shiraz was Sam Coffee Roasters' first venture into a city outside Tehran. One of the main reasons for choosing it was our longstanding friendship with Neshiman, a brand founded in Shiraz that has worked in furniture design and production for years. Over the course of our collaboration, we had seen firsthand Neshiman's attention to manufacturing quality and the integrity of its designs. Opening Sam in Shiraz gave us an opportunity to deepen that relationship and create a new space together as partners.

From the outset, we wanted to carry the familiar Sam experience into a city with a character of its own. We collaborated with Sprout Factory, a Shiraz-based brand, and through the campaign “It's Time for Shiraz, Time to Meet,” we spoke about hospitality, nature, and the region's local culture. We introduced five distinctive coffees from Colombia exclusively in our Shiraz space, as a way of acknowledging the discerning tastes of Shirazi guests when it comes to coffee.

In our first four months in Shiraz, we welcomed 25,446 guests. The story of this space's opening was also the most-viewed content on Sam Coffee Roasters' main Instagram account during the reporting period.

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We ran 20 campaigns over the year. One began with something our guests use every day: takeaway packaging. Changing that packaging was a deliberate choice. It also drew negative feedback. We tried to listen to criticism respectfully while staying committed to our goal. The new containers are made from recycled materials and, when placed in soil, decompose and return to the natural cycle without leaving lasting waste behind. This may seem like a small step, but it has allowed us to remove a substantial portion of plastic containers from Sam Coffee Roasters' daily operations, and we are proud of that decision.

Together with the Etude team, we hosted conversations about the effects of war on businesses as part of the campaign “A Shared Season.” At the time, we wanted to hear and document the experiences of managers making decisions about sales, sourcing, cash flow, their teams' futures, and the survival of their businesses with limited information and considerable uncertainty. Listening to those experiences helped us understand the circumstances behind each decision, and why different businesses might take different paths in uncertain times.

On National Iranian Cheetah Day, we spoke about the Cheetah House and directed part of the proceeds from the occasion toward equipping its habitat in Touran National Park. Our guests joined in by purchasing campaign products and contributing to the fund. That support also has a place on our everyday menu. For nearly three years, a portion of sales from our rice pudding has gone to the Zi-Ban fund to help protect Iran’s biodiversity.

Over the past year, we sold 4,281 servings of rice pudding in support of Iran's environment.

At a time when news and the consequences of war occupied so much of our attention, we wanted protecting nature to remain a priority. Soil erosion, water scarcity, and habitat loss often unfold more slowly and attract less attention. Yet their impact on people's lives and the ability of many businesses to continue operating can sometimes be as serious as that of crises such as war.

With this in mind, for the Asiatic black bear initiative, we worked with Zi-Ban and Khers o Khorma (“Bear and Date”) to offer dates produced by local communities living in the bear’s habitat. We began with this familiar product to start a conversation about how people’s lives and livelihoods are connected to habitat conservation.

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At our Sanaei space, we continued to exhibit works by independent and emerging artists. At Vanak, we collaborated with Tehran Zine to hold a single-sheet zine-making workshop and exhibit works by zine artists. We also worked with galleries at other Sam spaces, giving guests the opportunity to encounter contemporary Iranian art and discover artists as part of their everyday visits to the café.

Zamineh has followed this path since 1396 in the Iranian calendar (2017–18). Over those years, around 320 works by approximately 80 artists have been exhibited in Sam Coffee Roasters’ spaces. Two print issues of Zamineh’s periodical, with a combined print run of 1,000 copies, offered another way for conversations sparked by an artwork in a café to continue at home.

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The Sam Events team brings part of the Sam hospitality experience beyond our cafés. We choose our collaborations carefully, looking for events whose purpose and atmosphere align with Sam’s direction and where we can maintain our approach to hospitality.

Over the past year, Sam Events delivered 32 projects in Tehran: 14 for organizations and companies, and 18 private events. From catering at the Building Industry Exhibition in collaboration with KWC to preparing apple-and-mint drinks and turkey sandwiches for private events, we designed each event's hospitality around its setting and guests.

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For some people, their introduction to Sam begins with a menu page. Others look us up on the website after having a coffee at one of our cafés. Despite restrictions on internet access during the reporting period, our website recorded 273,624 visits and 898,173 pageviews. The menu pages for our spaces were viewed more than 264,000 times. We also made the path to direct ordering easier to access and presented options for business purchases on Sam’s website.

The main Instagram account's report gives us an approximate picture of the ages of that account's audience. Around 48% were between 25 and 34, and about 30% were between 35 and 44. In other words, nearly four in five people in that account's audience were aged 25 to 44.

After a restriction was imposed on Sam Coffee Roasters' main Instagram account during the year, our activity was interrupted for two months.

A few days after this reporting period ended, in October, we marked International Coffee Day on Instagram and YouTube by talking about the people who each play a part in coffee's journey: from the person who grows the beans to the person who sets aside a few minutes to drink coffee during a busy workday.

“Coffee reaches many people; coffee passes through many hands.”

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Now that Sam Coffee Roasters has reached its fifteenth anniversary, we also think about the interruptions of earlier years. The COVID lockdowns and the meetings that were postponed. The events of 1401 (2022–23). The months of war and the days when we could not welcome guests. Each time the flow of work and coming together was interrupted, we tried to get moving again. We fell, and we got back up. Without the guests who returned, and the colleagues who stood together to begin again each time, we would never have made it through some of those days.

For our fifteenth anniversary, we are telling the story of those ups and downs we have shared.

Through busy times and quiet ones, through war and peace, through silence and bustle, through distance and friendship, you were with us.

Thank you to everyone who returned to Sam Coffee Roasters even after time apart, and to the colleagues who prepared the cafés for each reunion. We celebrate fifteen years of Sam by remembering all those times we found our way back to one another.

Compiled by: Sam Coffee Roasters Marketing Team