I sit down with Nikos Kalamaras, one half of Unik Specialty Coffee Brewers, to talk through how two brothers from a village 20km outside Rhodes Town built one of the island’s few real specialty coffee shops, why the branding is squid-like, and why there’s no menu anywhere on the wall. We settle onto their outdoor patio, and I glance back at my rental scooter to check it’s still standing, the stand snapped off earlier when I shot away from the hotel, so I’d rigged a fix. Still upright. I settle in for the chat.
The Brothers and the Vision
Unik opened in February 2024, but the idea took hold two years earlier, when Nikos and his brother George went to their first Specialty Coffee Association seminar. “We started to know better what coffee is, what coffee can give to humanity,” Nikos said. There was family history behind it too. Their father ran a small cafeteria, the Greek term for an all-day bar, for thirty years with his own brother, starting with coffee before adding cocktails and wine in the evenings. “He kept it alive thirty years,” Nikos said with admiration. To dream like him, to make things happen like him, became their ambition.
Choosing Rhodes Town itself over their home village was necessary. “We are from a village, twenty kilometres outside the centre of Rhodes town,” Nikos said. Finding a spot in the hub of town mattered, “so everyone can come and meet us easily.” Two and a half years in, Nikos and George no longer make the daily trip in from the village. They’ve found a small apartment to rent in the town centre and live there now. “We can rest more,” Nikos said, perhaps a small admission of how much the early commute must have cost them.
Running the business as brothers has had its ups and downs, but Nikos is clear about what makes it work: sharing one vision, and the will to keep moving forward. “If you have the same vision…always to keep trying, the best thing is your project will have success.”
Why Specialty Coffee
Specialty coffee is still a relatively new idea in Greece. “In Greece, generally, specialty coffee is not so known with the Greek people,” Nikos said. “It started five years ago to do some curious steps in the Greek market.” For Nikos, the decision came down to something more like a personal philosophy than a business plan. “When you go back home and you look at yourself in the mirror and say, what is it I want to do better…the answer for all of us is to give our best…to whatever we do in our life. So specialty coffee, as the word says, it’s the best quality. We try to find the quality that makes the Greek people, our customers, and all the people that come and visit Rhodes, get a good quality cup of coffee.”
He notes that it isn’t an easy financial choice. “You already know about the prices in the market,” he said, “they go up, they don’t go lower.” It’s a rare bit of frankness from someone selling you the dream, an admission that chasing quality like this costs real money.
Currently Roasting in Crete
Unik’s coffee is roasted in Crete by a friend Nikos speaks about with real respect. “Right now we do have Dim, a very good friend, a roaster with a lot of experience in his hands…very reliable, Greek made. He’s one of the best in Greece.” It’s a relationship built on trust, clearly. But handing over your entire bean supply to another party in this case feels less like a risk and more like a real partnership.
The Name Nobody Guesses (me included)
Ask people what “Unik” means and they’ll assume it’s simply “unique,” styled differently. They’d be wrong, and the real story is better. “Our last name is Kalamaras. It sounds like calamari, a squid,” Nikos told me. The logo is a squid wearing a coffee cup as a hat. “The ‘Nik’ is not from Nikos. It stands for united Kalamaras, me and my brother, together.” I’m a sucker for clever marketing and this is a lovely detail. I can visualise two brothers in their far away village agonising over the name, somewhere in the distance a cat meows, and then after some time in the late evening they have their eureka moment.
Why It’s Pink
The colour scheme was just as considered as the name. Nikos worked with a friend who owns one of the biggest paint and colour companies in Greece to land on the shop’s signature pink. “When you are outside, as a customer, everywhere around the place you will go somewhere that will be attractive to your eyes,” he said. The same coffee cup logo carries across onto the building next door too, and around the corner sits a garden most first-time visitors miss, myself included the day before, too absorbed by the action behind the counter to notice it was there.
No Menu on the Wall
Unik’s Instagram bio reads “we are our people,” and it isn’t just a slogan. There’s no visible menu anywhere in the shop that I can find. “We have a lot of repeaters,” Nikos said. “Just with a smile, just with a good morning in Greek, it’s easy to know what they want.” For anyone new, or for tourists who don’t already know the order, the team simply takes their time to find out. “We have the time that they need, to serve them, to give our best to them.”
The philosophy runs deeper than recognising regulars, though. “We want everything to happen in a traditional way, by speaking, to know who is opposite from us, to share opinions, to give them options, whatever they want. When we are back at the bar, back to our machine, back to our grinders, we always think to do our best, not to get the profit, just to give our people the smile that they deserve. When you wake up early in the day and you want a coffee, you deserve it. You want your mind to begin well, to start your day well.”
The Colombian Behind the Crema
Reviewers keep coming back to the same detail: a rich crema and a chocolatey depth to the espresso. That comes down to one specific bean right now. “We do have a Colombia Bucaramanga purchased as our main coffee,” Nikos said. “We have chosen this coffee especially because Colombia, this past year, has had the best harvest season ever.” It isn’t an accident the coffee tastes the way it does. It’s a direct result of chasing a specific harvest at the right moment.
Ninety Percent Local
Despite Rhodes being one of the most visited islands in Greece, Unik’s business doesn’t lean on tourism the way you might expect. “The tourists don’t have the coffee as an everyday need,” Nikos said. “In the high season, it’s ninety percent Greeks and ten percent tourists.” That ratio holds even through the busiest months. When tourists do come in, the team makes a point of walking them through everything rather than rushing them toward whatever’s quickest to make. “They want to explore everything, so we are trying to be very helpful. They mostly drink Freddo, but there are some very special guys who go for a double espresso or filter coffee, and these are the guys we are mostly excited to serve, because we know that the work we do is appreciated.”
I can vouch for that appreciation firsthand. The double espresso I had here yesterday was a treat and it set me up for the rest of what I had planned.
Brothers Splitting the Work
Reviewers also single out the shop’s sense of humour, which Nikos is quick to credit elsewhere. “I think this part belongs to my brother,” he said. The two of them split the work along fairly natural lines, each sticking to what they’re actually good at rather than forcing an even split for its own sake. “My main position is the quality of the coffee. I grind, I measure, I extract, everything about the coffee and prepare it. George’s is more to connect the people with the rest of the shop, with the rest of our team, and to give you the true experience.” George is also the one who talks customers through the equipment on display near the entrance, the Aeropress, the grinder, the retail merchandise. Nikos mentioned a couple who’d come in the week before wanting help setting up a manual brew method for their Airbnb during their stay. George talked them through it, found them the right kit, and they left happy, exactly the kind of interaction the shop is built around.
What to Actually Order
I asked Nikos what a first-time visitor should order if they only had one coffee stop in them on the island. He warned me the answer might disappoint some. “Whoever thinks about Greece, they think blue and white, the views, the sea, the sun. So my guess belongs to the first wave of coffee, it’s a frappé.” He goes on to say that what he’d really recommend is a Freddo Espresso, and he makes the case for it with real pride. “It’s a Greek patent, developed around a decade ago. For us, it’s life saving.” He says the drink started out deliberately strong, more grounds, a more striking flavour, but the shop has moved toward a more balanced version over time to avoid excess bitterness. For anyone who wants milk in theirs, that option exists too, and the version he’d point health-conscious drinkers toward uses zero fat milk. There’s nothing left to do but try Nikos’s recommendation, and now I’m hooked. It solves the obvious problem, hot coffee on a hot day, and every day is hot here in August.
I’ve met more than my fair share of entrepreneurs, and there were moments in this chat that felt like sitting in on a business conference. Nikos was inspiring: a quality-first approach as the bedrock, built on strong service and real awareness of what keeps people coming back. The culture of his team, and his relationship with his brother, showed the same thing, everyone pulling in the same direction. I’m always struck by the work ethic in shops like this: strong relationships like the critical one with their roaster, real teamwork, fast service, quality never compromised. It’s a microcosm of what success looks like.
With the freddo espresso finished, now my pick for the best drink in Greece, I’m back on the scooter which is thankfully still standing. I’m headed next to visit Bible Coffee in the old town. Intrigued by the name and impressed by the reviews, it was on my list weeks ago and I reckon it’s the right place for the second cup of the day. Τα λέμε σύντομα.
