A Life Together — What Good Is It to Live Well Alone? Dodeokgwa Gyubeom

A month ago, having left behind its space in Sinsu-dong, Seoul, Dodeokgwa Gyubeom opened a new location in Sangsu-dong. We visited, curious about the stern, unusual name for a roastery cafe.

Interviewer Parc Jinmyoung
Interviewee Lee Gyubeom (Owner of Dodeokgwa Gyubeom)
Edited by Pyo Youngso

What time do you usually come in?
We open at 11, but I usually come in around 6 a.m. to roast. Sometimes I have to roast in the evening, but coming in early puts me in a good mood. If I'm going to come in early anyway, I figure I might as well come in while it's still dark, before sunrise. I get here around six, turn on the roaster, and sit for a while in the dark space with the shutter still down to gather my thoughts. Today I was thinking, ‘I should come in early again, have some coffee, and think things over,’ but I ended up running late. (laughs)

How long have you been focused on coffee?
I started my own roastery in 2017. I actually bought my first roaster back in 2016. Roasting is how I got into coffee. Dodeokgwa Gyubeom has had a location in Sinsu-dong, Mapo-gu, since 2022. That space was about 13 square meters — half the size of this one.

So business was good enough that you expanded and relocated.
Right around the time I started vaguely thinking, ‘I'd like to work in a different space,’ the building was sold, and the landlady said, ‘Young man, could you please move out?’ It wasn't exactly a cheerful ‘Sure, I'll go!’ but that's how the move happened. Honestly, I loved the Sinsu-dong space. I'm not talking about sales — I just had a great time with the people there. I first heard the news around May this year, which gave me two or three months to find a new place. I took my time looking, signed the lease on this spot in September, did construction in October, and opened in November.

How did you get into coffee roasting in the first place?
There's a movie called ‘All About My Wife.’ Actor Ryu Seungryong plays a really charming character in it. His character has several jobs, and one of them is coffee roaster. The way he roasted coffee on screen looked so cool. Watching that made me want to try it myself, so I bought a small used roaster. That's how I started roasting at home. Once I tried it, I thought, ‘I could actually sell this,’ ‘I'm pretty good at roasting.’ So in 2017 I opened my first shop in Hapjeong-dong. And then I struggled hard for two years. My belief that ‘my coffee tastes good’ had come from shallow knowledge — I'd opened a shop knowing basically nothing.

It wasn't called Dodeokgwa Gyubeom back then, was it?
No, it had a different name. And naturally, business wasn't good. Back then I didn't even know what VAT was. (laughs)

What did you do before this?
Before that, I worked at a performance planning company, and before that, I wrote songs and composed music. At one point, being a musician was my main job.

That explains all the CDs and LPs in the shop.
After closing my first shop, I opened a second one in Yeonhui-dong. Once that closed too, I set up the roaster at home and used it like a home cafe. I brought in my music gear too, and whenever people gathered, I'd brew them coffee. Over time, the space got more and more crowded. I felt like I needed a new space, so I opened a cafe in Sinsu-dong. Basically, I just moved the cafe that had been in my home into a new spot. That's how it began.

So this is your third shop. What do you think is the secret to Dodeokgwa Gyubeom lasting this long?
At first, I think people were curious just because of the name. Honestly, I wanted something simple. My name is Gyubeom, so I thought I'd just tack something onto the front of it — that's how the name came about.
Having moved shops a few times before, I learned that whenever you leave, you have to throw away all the interior work. You paid money to build it, and then you pay a hefty sum again just to tear it down and clear it out. The trash alone fills up a 1.5-ton truck. When I opened Dodeokgwa Gyubeom, I built the shop using modular, assembled furniture. It wasn't originally about reuse — it started as a way to cut costs. There's a company called Lampel Design near the Sanulrim Theater in Mapo-gu that makes recycled lighting, and while preparing the shop, the owner and I actually put into practice the idea of ‘don't buy new, use what you have, use what's cheap, use what someone else has used before.’ I'm someone who has to make an effort to live that way, but for him, that's just real life, day to day. He influenced me a lot.
It started as a way to save on materials, but the advantage of modular construction is that it can be rearranged anytime. For example, last week the bar was in a different spot than it is now — it has wheels on it. Even before I knew I'd have to move shops, I once said in an interview, ‘If I had to move right now, I could leave without leaving any trash behind.’ And in the end, we really did produce just one bag of trash.

During this recent move, you mean?
Yes. The entire teardown, over the course of a single day, produced just one 20-liter trash bag. People were like, ‘Is that really all of it?’ Of course, some things had already been thrown out along the way, but the fact that there was almost no trash left when we finished clearing everything out at the end made me incredibly proud. It wasn't something I achieved alone, but it was still a deeply happy moment for me. I'd always said, ‘What is there here that we'd just leave behind?’ — and it turned out to be true.

Did that process change your philosophy of running the space? The lids on your to-go cups are paper, and the straws seem to be biodegradable.
Yes, though of course paper doesn't mean zero waste. The same goes for eco-friendly materials in general. Still, I try to cut down where I can — like deciding not to use plastic cups, that sort of thing. That said, I'm not going to refuse a customer a disposable cup when they need one. Honestly, I'm not even sure those so-called eco-friendly cups make much difference. They all end up in a general waste bag and get buried in the ground anyway, so I sometimes wonder if calling them ‘eco-friendly’ really means anything.

The open front of the shop is quite unusual.
From outside, this space looks like a garage attached to a house. I actually thought about parking a car in here, so I took out the front glass. I imagined running a coffee truck and, after closing, pulling the truck into this space, or maybe using it like a storage room for green beans — but in the end, I never did it. I even went to look at used cars. (laughs)

Are most of your customers neighborhood locals, or people coming from elsewhere?
About 30 percent are locals, and 70 percent come specifically to visit. When we were in Sinsu-dong, locals made up only about 10 percent — it was a neighborhood with very little foot traffic. This area is technically Hongdae too, but since it's a back alley, more people come specifically wanting to check it out than just wander in.
Honestly, I never really thought much about hospitality. I believed the space needed to be comfortable and pleasant for the person working in it. While moving the shop, a lot of people helped me out, and they told me firmly, ‘Maybe you could do whatever you wanted at the old place, but if you don't break out of that habit yourself, you won't be able to grow any further.’ Going through this renovation actually shifted my values a bit. Giving up on the idea of running it like a garage came from a similar realization. Up until now, I'd only ever done what I liked — with the coffee, with the shop. But thinking it over, I realized that if I paid just a bit more attention to the customer's perspective, the shop could become so much better. So I put chairs at the bar and hung up vinyl sheeting as a windbreak. It's not an incredibly comfortable space yet, but I keep thinking about how to make customers feel even a little more at ease. It's still a work in progress.

The cafe is open all seven days of the week now, right?
It used to be five days a week, seven hours a day. I'd take a whole month off during the peak of summer and the peak of winter. I felt like, why bother running the heating and air conditioning and polluting the environment on top of it, in weather that extreme? I think I was pretty full of myself back then. Now, with rent higher than before, and my thinking having shifted a bit too — before it was, ‘Since we're open such short hours, anyone who wants to come will come when we're open,’ but now it's more like, ‘Whenever the customer wants to come.’ (laughs) That's just how I am. My thinking keeps changing, and then I act on it right away. Right now, I'm pretty satisfied with being open seven days a week.

It hasn't even been a month yet, has it?
Not quite a month. (laughs) But doing this, I've realized this is what real small-business ownership actually feels like. What I was doing before feels, in hindsight, more like a hobby I did purely for my own satisfaction.

‘We don’t survive alone—we thrive together.’ That line on the Dodeokgwa Gyubeom Instagram account really stood out to me.
That was actually a phrase my girlfriend came up with during an interview with a magazine called Monthly Coffee. The original line was ‘We can’t survive alone, but we can thrive together.’ A shop that no customers visit can’t stay open. It’s the people who fill the space that allow it to move forward. We changed ‘can’t survive alone’ to ‘don’t survive alone,’ to reflect the direction we want to take and our own sense of agency. We really do try to thrive together with people. Among the customers who come to the shop, we tend to focus more on the so-called ‘outsiders’ than the ‘insiders.’ When we left Sinsu-dong, what I was saddest to leave behind were the relationships we’d built there, but thankfully, most of the customers we met back then still come to visit. It’s the same with the staff we work with. When someone says, at closing time, ‘Today was a meaningful, good day,’ it makes me happy too. Our direction is to become a space where people can form good relationships, share coffee, and comfort one another. That’s really all there is to it.

Do you have a favorite travel destination when it comes to coffee?
The trip that stands out most in my memory is Mongolia. I brought coffee along with me, and while staying in a ger, I shared coffee with people every morning. As for where I’d like to go, it’s obviously the growing regions—Ethiopia, Kenya, South America… Traveling to coffee-producing regions is my next goal. I think I might get the chance sometime soon.

There are so many independently run cafés these days. What do you think it takes to grow sustainably?
Since it’s a coffee shop, delivering good coffee is the baseline. But I think people should spend less on initial investment. A lot of places pour so much money into interior design from the very start. But that has nothing to do with whether the business actually does well. I think even a completely bare space with just a table and a machine can be enough, as long as you genuinely care for your customers and put real effort into your coffee. I believe focusing on the coffee itself gives you a better chance of survival. Though I feel a little hesitant saying this, since I haven’t exactly succeeded as a business myself. (Laughs)

What keeps you going without burning out?
In the end, it comes down to rest. Even when running a café, you need to secure days off from the very beginning. That’s the only way to go the distance. At first, since you can’t predict your revenue, you end up opening every single day, and before you know it, you can never take a break—because your income changes immediately if you do. Even if you get sick and have to rest, you need to set a limit where the shop won’t become an obstacle, and start at a scale that matches that limit. When I ran my previous shop, I set the operating days at around 20 per month, calculated the expected revenue based on that, and then looked for a commercial district that matched. Naturally, that meant choosing an alley with cheaper rent, and that’s what I did.

What does the most delicious coffee mean to you?
My standard is clear. When drinking coffee, there shouldn’t be anything that catches in your mouth—no rough texture, no bitterness, no sharp acidity. I like coffee where everything is well balanced and it goes down smoothly and easily. I try to make coffee like that myself, but it happens only a few times a year. Maybe three or four times? Sometimes it’s my own coffee, sometimes someone else’s—usually it’s someone else’s.
I basically trust coffee whose origin is clear and whose information is transparently disclosed. Coffee is food, after all. Since it’s something people put in their mouths, it should be clear which country and farm it came from, who grew it, who roasted it, and everything from the region to the processing method. It’s not just the coffee itself that’s ‘specialty’—what makes something specialty is conveying that information clearly to consumers and building a good culture around it. Among coffees that are transparently disclosed, I like ones you can drink every day without feeling burdened. I’m not really drawn to extremely expensive coffee.

Do you have any plans for the future?
Maybe three days a week? I’m still in the middle of changing things, so it keeps shifting back and forth. (Laughs) These days, I’m paying attention to making sure each team member can build their own relationships with customers in this space. Sometimes I only pull espresso and let the staff take the orders. It might turn into a good relationship, or it might not, but at least we can check in with each other. So whether I’m there or not, I hope customers keep coming to the café and talking with the staff. Building a happy life together with the staff here, while also getting along well with our customers—like I said before, that’s really all there is to it. I’ll think about what comes next, when the time comes.