Spoon & Tamago - japanese art, design and culture

What happens when a specialty paper company opens a specialty coffee shop? Well, you get the utterly delightful PAP Coffee, located on a small, quiet backstreet and removed from the bustle of Harajuku. The unlikely owner is Sanyo Shigyo, a 55-year old Tokyo-based paper company whose bread and butter is specialty paper and printing.

The initiative, explains PAP Coffee, was rooted in a chance encounter in 2022 when representatives from the paper company were visiting a supplier in Thailand and happened to meet the proprietors of a coffee bean farm. Together, they began discussing the possibilities of what a specialty paper and coffee shop might look like.

From there, the puzzle pieces began falling into place. Afterall, coffee shops use numerous paper products and telling their story of paper using coffee suddenly made a lot of sense.

In order to convey the unique appeal of paper, they hired designer Aya Kodama, from Tokyo-based design studio Bullet Inc, for art direction and branding. Fascinated by what she calls “design with material appeal”, Kodama is particularly knowledgeable in the field of packaging design and created a lineup of paper cup holders, coffee bean labels and business cards that all transcend the possibilities of paper.

The paper jigsaw puzzle coaster are adorable, and are an homage to one of the company’s business lines of creating jigsaw puzzles. The visual identity and branding recently won Japan’s 2025 packaging design awards.

For the interior, they hired designer Kei Harada, who created a plan centered around a main reception counter that would welcome visitors from the street. Paper was used throughout the cafe in unexpected, places like the counter, fittings, tables, chairs, and shelves, creating a space where customers could experience the new appeal of paper.

PAP Coffee (map) is open 11:00am 〜 7:00pm. If you’re like us and are fans of paper AND coffee, you should definitely stop by.