Building South Africa’s Coffee Directory from Scratch

Find Me a Coffee needed to become the go-to resource for South Africa’s coffee culture. The challenge was creating a comprehensive directory that could scale from launch to thousands of listings while maintaining performance and providing genuine value to coffee enthusiasts.

The Challenge

Building a directory from the ground up meant solving several technical and content challenges:

• Efficiently collecting and verifying coffee shop data across South Africa
• Creating a fast, searchable interface for thousands of listings
• Implementing location-based search and mapping
• Building for organic SEO growth from day one
• Designing a system that could scale with monthly content additions

Our Technical Approach

We built a custom solution using modern web technologies, focusing on performance, scalability, and user experience.

Technology Stack

Astro + Supabase We chose Astro for its exceptional performance and SEO capabilities, paired with Supabase for a robust, scalable backend that handles growing listing data efficiently.

Custom Data Collection Rather than manual entry, we built a custom scraping tool to efficiently gather coffee shop information, then enriched it with verified data from the Google Places API. This automated approach allows rapid directory growth while maintaining data quality.

Location Features Integration with Google Maps API provides users with accurate location data, directions, and neighborhood exploration—essential features for discovering new coffee spots.

SEO Strategy

The directory is built with organic search growth at its core. We implemented a comprehensive SEO strategy that targets local coffee searches across South African cities and neighborhoods. The site is populated on a monthly basis with new listings, building authority and relevance over time.

Key Features

• Fast, intuitive search and filtering
• Neighborhood-based coffee culture exploration
• Interactive maps for location discovery
• Review and rating system
• Mobile-optimized browsing experience
• Category-based navigation (roasteries, specialty coffee, etc.)

Results

Since launching, Find Me a Coffee has become a growing resource for South Africa’s coffee community. The technical foundation supports continued growth, with new listings added monthly and organic search traffic building steadily.

• Custom-built directory platform from the ground up
• Scalable architecture supporting thousands of listings
• Automated data collection and enrichment system
• Growing organic search presence
• Foundation for South Africa’s coffee culture community

Technical Implementation

The site demonstrates how modern web technologies can create performant, user-friendly directories. The combination of Astro’s speed, Supabase’s reliability, and strategic API integrations delivers a superior user experience while maintaining the flexibility to evolve with the business.