tabletoppingboardgames 
There’s a cozy buzz in the café. The espresso machine is working overtime, customers are sipping their drinks, and everything looks calm on the surface. But behind the counter? It’s a whole different story. You and your fellow baristas are in a quiet but fierce competition, racing to complete orders as fast as you can. The goal? Be the best barista in the café, without making too many customers wait. Because if they wait too long, they won’t just leave… they’ll leave with a grudge.
👥 2-4 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designer: Euijin Han
🎨 Artwork: Siwon Hwang
🏢 Publisher: Korea Boardgames (review copy provided by Asmodee Belgium).
Gameplay Overview
You start out with a few customers already waiting in line. To serve them, you’ll need to collect the right ingredients. On your turn, you’ll move your meeple up to three times on the ingredient board. Each step has to be either horizontal or vertical. No diagonals, at least not at first. Every ingredient you pass over or land on gets picked up, but here’s the catch: you have to place them into your three cups as you collect them. You can’t move them around afterwards, so if you mess up your route, you might end up wasting ingredients or even losing them entirely if you empty out a cup.
When you think one of your cups matches a customer’s order, you can place the cup on their card. But before you do, it’s worth double-checking. You need every ingredient shown on the card, and nothing extra. If it’s a perfect match, great, you’ve completed that order. It goes into your scoring pile. And if the order had a specialty label, you also get a rush token. These let you take one extra step during future turns, which can really come in handy when you’re trying to fine-tune your path or grab that one last ingredient.
The more orders you complete, the more pressure you’re putting on the competition. After your turn, the two players sitting to your left each have to draw a new customer and add them to their queue. If the deck of order cards runs out, the café’s open sign flips to closed, which means the end of the game is coming up fast.
Once you’ve got three completed orders under your belt, you can trade them in for a permanent upgrade. These are super useful and can really shift how you play. One lets you pick up double ingredients on corner spaces. Another lets you collect extra ingredients when passing an opponent. There are also upgrades for special spots on the board, and one that finally lets you move diagonally, giving you way more flexibility.
At the end of every turn, your customer line moves down one row. If a customer reaches the last row and still hasn’t been served, they leave annoyed, and you get a penalty card, a dislike. Get five of those, and just like when the order deck runs out, the open sign flips to closed and the endgame is triggered.
When the café is officially closed, it’s time to tally up the scores. Every completed order is worth one rating point. Every dislike takes one away. Each upgrade you unlocked is worth two. The player with the highest total becomes the café’s top barista. The others? Well, better luck next shift.
Game Info
Coffee Rush is a light and accessible game for 2 to 4 players, recommended from age 8 and up. A full game takes around 30 minutes, though it can move faster if your group plays briskly. It was designed by Euijin Han and originally published in 2023 by Korea Boardgames. Thanks to a few international partners, it’s now easier to find in other regions too. We received our copy from Asmodee Belgium, who included both Dutch and French rulebooks.
Components, Production and Artwork
Let’s talk about what’s in the box, because this is a game that catches the eye straight away. The plastic coffee cups are the real show-stealers. Each player gets three, and they’re not just decorative. You’ll actually be dropping little ingredient tokens into them while you play. It’s simple, but really satisfying. Like stirring foam on your cappuccino kind of satisfying.
The ingredient tokens themselves are fun and detailed. There are eight different types, like coffee beans, chocolate chunks, tea leaves, and tiny ice cubes. They look like tiny treats you’d see in a barista training kit. The game includes two trays to hold all these pieces, which helps a lot during setup and also keeps the table a bit more organized. That said, if you’ve got larger fingers, fishing out the smaller tokens from the trays can be a bit fiddly. Nothing deal-breaking, just something to be aware of.
Each player gets a meeple in their player color, used to move around the ingredient board, plus a matching player board to keep track of your orders. There’s also a set of four upgrade tiles for each player, and 80 order cards to keep the café buzzing. In two-player games, you’ll use the pink and blue meeples specifically, as those are the only ones included for that variant. So for two players, you’re limited to pink and blue, even if that’s not your usual color pick.
There’s also a small cardboard start player token and rush tokens that let you take an extra step on your turn. The box includes a plastic insert that holds the components nicely, especially the cups, so they don’t get banged around between plays. Overall, for a smaller-box game, it feels surprisingly polished and thoughtful. It strikes a nice balance between playful and practical.
The artwork by Siwon Hwang is charming and warm. It fits the mood of the game perfectly. Nothing too flashy, but it pulls you into the café vibe without trying too hard. It’s just… nice. And that’s kind of the theme with this game as a whole.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Coffee Rush is very easy to learn, which makes it great for mixed groups or as a pick-up-and-play kind of game. The turns are short and the flow of the game clicks quickly. On your turn, you move your meeple up to three spaces, always either horizontally or vertically. No diagonals allowed, at least not until you unlock that specific upgrade.
As you move, you collect the ingredients you pass through or land on, and you immediately assign them to one of your three cups. Once something’s in a cup, it stays there, so you need to think a little ahead while moving around. You’re essentially planning mini delivery routes for yourself.
You can’t stop on a space where another player’s meeple is standing, but you can pass through them and even snatch up the ingredient there in the process. Once you’ve unlocked the right upgrade, doing this will even give you bonus ingredients, which makes planning your path a bit more interesting.
What I found really clever is the way the player interaction happens without direct conflict. When you complete orders, the players to your left each get new customers to serve. So while you’re doing great and ticking off drinks, they suddenly have to deal with an even longer line. It’s low-key sabotage without being mean. But if everyone starts fulfilling orders at the same time, the deck runs out faster and that can bring the game to an end sooner than expected.
There’s also a second way to end the game. If a player lets five customers slide off their player board without serving them, they’ll collect five dislikes, which also triggers the end. That creates a nice bit of tension, especially as everyone starts racing to finish orders or avoid penalties.
Final Thoughts
Let’s be honest, with a name like Coffee Rush, you expect a bit of chaos. And the game delivers on that. You’re constantly juggling your movement, cup planning, and customer queue. One or two careless turns and suddenly your peaceful café turns into a full-blown espresso emergency.
What works really well is how the gameplay matches the theme. You feel the pressure of a busy café shift, but it never becomes overwhelming. The decisions are small and manageable, but still satisfying. The upgrades are fun to earn, the ingredient puzzle is rewarding, and there’s just enough player interaction to keep everyone engaged. You’re not just doing your own thing in a corner, what you do affects the others.
It’s definitely on the lighter end of the scale. If you’re into heavy strategy games or want deep, long-term planning, this might not be the game for you. But for what it is, a casual game with charming bits, quick turns, and smart pacing, it really hits the spot.
We found that three players is the sweet spot. You get a good balance of interaction without too much waiting. Two works fine as well, but it loses a bit of that ingredient-grabbing tension. Four players ramps things up a bit and can get a little tighter on the board, which is fun if you’re into that kind of chaos.
A quick tip: don’t ignore your upgrades. Getting diagonal movement or picking up double ingredients from corners can make a big difference. Also, don’t waste your rush tokens just because you have them.
So who’s this game for? I’d say families, casual gamers, and anyone who wants a quick, interactive game with a strong theme and great table presence. It’s also a great one to bring out at game nights as a warm-up or in between heavier games. If you’re into intense eurogames, this probably won’t scratch that itch. But if you’re looking for something light and clever that still gives you a few satisfying choices, it’s worth a try.
At the end of the day, Coffee Rush is one of those games that doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. It’s not trying to be groundbreaking. It just wants to give you a fun 30 minutes, a few laughs, and that brief moment of panic when you realize your third customer is about to storm out, leaving a dislike in their wake. And honestly, we’re here for it.
📝 We received a copy of Coffee Rush from Asmodee Belgium for review.
