The Underdog

The Underdog is a specialty coffee roastery and third-wave café in Thissio, Athens, founded on May 5, 2015. The name was chosen deliberately: the team had been roasting specialty coffee since 2011 and launched this project acknowledging their position as challengers in the Greek market. What followed contradicted that framing — within the first year, the roastery's team had accumulated a competition record that few shops anywhere in Europe could match.

The Underdog grew out of an existing coffee operation before being established as a distinct brand in Athens. The Thissio café became the flagship, building its reputation through measurable competition results rather than through scale or marketing spend. In recent years the brand has developed a franchise model structured for compact urban replication, using the original location as the operational foundation for that expansion.

The roastery runs two machines — an iRm and a Giesen — with a stated weekly production capacity of 2.5 tonnes. All bags are hand-packed on-site. The team's articulated philosophy is to "roast to reveal, not to disguise," a transparency-forward approach consistent with the lighter end of the specialty spectrum. Beyond production, The Underdog operates as an Authorized SCA Training Center, offering Coffee Diploma workshops and bespoke competition consulting from an in-house training facility.