Thursday midday in Anderlecht, 19 degrees and a closed grey lid overhead. The southwesterly is running at 45 km/h and crosses the market like an open yard. In two days the fire goes on again here. Coffee roasted under the open sky means something very literal: the only ceiling we have changes colour from one weekend to the next.
Coffee roasted under the open sky and the study that counted exposed brick
In March 2026, the journal City, Culture and Society published a study by Conrad Kickert, Jeffrey Parker and Kelly Gregg (University at Buffalo and University of New Orleans). More than a hundred people across American and Canadian cities sent in photos of their favourite independent coffee shop. The same list came back everywhere: 66% tattooed or pierced baristas, over half with chalkboard signage, reclaimed wood, local art, event posters, exposed brick. Potted plants in a third of them.
The second half of the study stings more. 158 participants were shown interior photos and asked to name the city: Cincinnati, St. Louis, Toronto, later Chicago and San Francisco. They got it wrong. Even people living in the photographed city failed to recognise their own coffee shops. One participant put it plainly: these aesthetics are very transferable now, the photo could have come from any of those cities.
Kyle Chayka named the phenomenon "AirSpace" back in 2016, after noticing that raw wood, exposed brick and Edison bulbs had gone identical from Berlin to Los Angeles. Ten years on, there are numbers to go with it.
Coffee roasted under the open sky: the backdrop arrives with the forecast
We work outdoors at Marché de l'Abattoir, by the exit of the Manufakture car park in Anderlecht. Walls: none. What stands in for décor is whatever the sky hands over that day.
Here is the coming weekend, per meteobelgique. Saturday 5 September: 12 to 22 degrees, partly cloudy, northwesterly at 30 km/h, dry. Sunday 6 September: 11 to 24 degrees, mostly clear, easterly at 20 km/h. Two days, two kinds of light. On Saturday the light comes filtered and the smoke leaves sideways, pushed by the northwest. On Sunday the low September sun falls at an angle across Golden's drum and keeps it bright until about noon.
Laurent reads that difference before he lights up. A 30 km/h wind cools the steel and steals heat, so on Saturday he holds the flame higher and shortens the drying phase. On Sunday, with still air and 24 degrees at the peak, he brings the fire down and brakes earlier so the bean does not run ahead of him. Same sack of green coffee, two signatures.
Coffee roasted under the open sky: the only backdrop the wind delivers
Reclaimed wood and exposed brick have a supplier. Local art sells by the metre. The sky above the market shows up with whatever it has that morning, and nobody can order an identical one for the following weekend.
That is also where the visible part comes from: smoke bending with the wind, steam lifting off the beans when the air is cold, the colour of wet concrete after an August shower. How the whole experience works is set out separately, and anyone who wants to taste two weekends side by side takes the Meteo Discovery Box home.
Saturday and Sunday, coffee roasted under the open sky while the light holds
We roast and sell on Saturday and Sunday only, at Marché de l'Abattoir, by the exit of the Manufakture car park, Anderlecht. Batches stay small because the day is short and there is one fire.
This weekend the sky is open and the wind swings from northwest to east between the two days. Laurent sets the fire and the timing on Golden separately for each day, so anyone who comes both days goes home with two coffees as different as those two skies. Whatever is left goes into the shop until it runs out.
Brut. Sauvage. Imprévisible.
---
