Its beans are famous, so why are its cafés only in Busan?

The coffee you had in Seoul may have been made with beans from Momos in Busan. ☕Momos Coffee (@momoscoffee_official)A coffee shop that does well usually opens in other cities. When customers line up, it opens a second shop; when it takes franchisees, the number of shops grows fast. That is also how the formula came about: do well outside Seoul, then open in Seoul. The number of shops is read as the size of the brand.2007, in front of Oncheonjang Station in Busan. A 30-year-old founder who had left a railway-related company opened a shop in a 13 m² storeroom in front of his parents' restaurant. At first he, too, planned to expand through franchising if it went well. Even open from 6 a.m. to midnight, daily sales were under 100,000 won. That December, a post on a Busan online community said the coffee here was good, and customers began to grow. The name Momos comes from a term for people who consume rationally and ethically. The motto is Specialty for All.When customers grew, he did not open a second shop in the next neighborhood. In July 2008, he added a second floor on the same spot and enlarged the shop. In April 2009, at a coffee expo in Atlanta, he tasted beans with fruity and floral notes for the first time, and in 2011 he opened a coffee class so customers could come and learn. Instead of adding shops, he spent money on people and beans. A university senior who came as a part-timer in 2007 became a barista in 2009 and, with the company waiting alongside for years, became the first Korean World Barista Champion, in Boston in 2019. That person became co-CEO in 2022.A shop opened in a Busan department store in 2015 grew in both sales and popularity. But the résumés coming to the company from across the country declined. Customers were coming for the department store, not the coffee, and the belief that this was a company people wanted to work for was fading. It closed once the five-year contract was up.The shops are Oncheonjang, Yeongdo, Marine City and Domoheon. Four, all in Busan, all company-run. There are no plans for a Seoul shop. The co-CEO said that rather than going to Seoul, they had to make people come to Busan. More than 1 million customers a year visit the four Busan shops, and 60 percent of the 183 staff came from outside Busan to work there. Since January 1, 2022, the shops close at 6 p.m. Now the only exception is the Domoheon shop on Saturdays, open until 8.Instead, it sent its beans across the country. It kept its own online store, and in November 2023 opened a shop on Naver and began to grow online in earnest. Cafés in Seoul brew coffee with these beans. It supplies cafés wholesale, sells 1 kg bags at Costco, and is also sold on Kurly and Shinsegae Mall. It has also made it into a well-known bean shop in Tokyo.In 2025, sales were 32 billion won, 40 percent of it online. Net profit was 4 billion won, and it has more than 60 baristas alone. In the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops announced in Madrid in February 2026, it ranked 22nd, one of two picks from Korea. It has been twenty years since it opened in 2007.Instead of adding franchise shops, it sold its beans to cafés nationwide. Momos stayed Busan's coffee and made world-class coffee.