Announced as a “coming soon” feature back in April, Zwift’s Coffee Stop is now available in game. Let’s dive into the details of how this feature works…
What It Does
Have you ever been riding with a great group on Zwift, but do you need to hop off the bike to grab a towel, refill a water bottle, or take a nature break?
Coffee Stop lets you cease pedaling and hop off your bike for a quick break, while your avatar keeps pace with the group you’re in so you don’t lose the fun of riding with that great group once you return to the bike.
Taking a Coffee Stop
To take a Coffee Stop, simply tap the Coffee Stop icon (coffee mug) from the action bar or within the Companion app.
Usage Limits
- If you activate the Coffee Stop in the first 5 minutes of your ride, you will only get a 30-second break
- Once you activate a Coffee Stop, a 30-minute timer begins. Only after these 30 minutes elapse can you trigger another Coffee Stop.
- Coffee Shop is disabled in race events, group workouts, and individual workouts. Tip: during individual workouts you can just hit the “Pause” button in Companion or the Action Bar if you need to take a break for any reason.
- Coffee Stop is available in group rides, except in the last 5km of distance-based group rides and the last 15 minutes of time-based group rides.
- Coffee Stop is disabled if you aren’t moving, or are riding alone (no nearby riders).
Our favorite Aussie, Shane Miller, put together a quick video digging into all the Coffee Stop details:
Two Sneaky Coffee Tips
- Entering event pens early lets you accumulate time toward that 30-minute window, so you can use a 3-minute Coffee Stop right when the event starts. (This is probably something Zwift should change.)
- Need to know how long you must ride before taking another Coffee Stop? Click on the disabled Coffee Stop icon in the action bar and a countdown timer will appear!
Questions or Comments?
While this seems like a simple feature, there are lots of questions surrounding it. What does my activity look like on Strava? Will I get credit for finishing a route? Etc, etc.
If you have questions, check out Zwift’s Coffee Stop forum topic which includes an extensive FAQ.
Feel free to post comments or questions in that forum topic, or share below!
this is rubbish ! worst add on ever
who keep riding while having a break IRL?
this will destroy the long rides accomplishments and mess up all the upcoming records attempts.
i really don t get it! this feature could be useful but every 30 min is quite insane , or pple have prostatic issues
I can’t quite decide whether this is parody or not…
Nobody tell this guy it’s ALL made up. Indoors you’re really going nowhere at all.
Do you know what happens when you get off your bike while descending Alpe du Zwift? Have you ever tried that in real life?
“who keep riding while having a break IRL?”
[Tour de France peloton looks at each other]
You don’t get power ups in IRL either…
On Zwift today, I lost HR connection, and thought how wonderful the advent of the Coffee Stop will be so that I can fix things like that without falling off the back of whatever group I’m in… only to find out later that it’s not possible to access settings during Coffee Stop. Adding this would make the feature actually useful.
Fortunately, the teleport feature coming later this summer will allow you to stop, adjust settings, and then rejoin your group.
We are sweeping a rider, but he/she is not pushing enough. If he/she takes a coffee break, does it help to deliver the rider to thegroup?
Hi – I tried that this morning on a ride. It doesn’t work. A 2 second gap eased out to a 5 second gap.
it absolutely works. You can crank up what you need to catch and the person being swept follows.
Good option for longer robo rides … but I noticed a problem today : after interrupting the 3min stop by starting to pedal again, I couldn’t steer anymore … hopefully this can be fixed by ZHQ
It‘s not just steering loss, but all buttons on my kickr-bike don‘t work anymore
Yes … I confirm … also no U-turn possible … not sure if it’s because of the coffee stop itself or because of interrupting while starting to pedal with a short high effort 🤷🏻♂️
Takes me 30 seconds just to get unclipped!
Don’t try clip pedals IRL 😉
My avatar stopped with more than 1 minute to go. Add this to the mile-high bug pile.
What happens if (when?) everyone in a group decides to coffee stop bypass the radio tower?
Another seemingly untested update so not sure if these problems have been reported yet. The rider list on right side on my screen moves up and down like its possessed whenever I move my cursor. The game crashes if I look at the results of a race and scroll up or down. When I finish a ride, the power graph no longer has the comparison bar to see how much worse I’m riding compared to my best.
Two tricks. Keep a pee bucket nearby (sorry, this won’t work for females) and hang a hydration bladder above you. No breaks needed – only hard-core Zwifters need apply. 🤣
More crap rather than sorting out the real issues that have been in game for years.
You might think of this feature as “crap” but reality is that a lot of users have been asking for this for many years. People are riding on Zwift for fun. Real life interrupts that occasionally. With coffee break, nobody has to choose between getting a drink and staying in the group ride anymore.
A lot of the new stuff that’s coming this Spring/Summer are frequently voiced user requests. For years, users have been complaining about Zwift not listening to them. Now that they finally started to listen, some complain about that, too.
And if you don’t like it, don’t use it. I don’t take Zwift so seriously that it becomes all-important. I don’t race IRL and I don’t race on Zwift up to this point. I ride because I enjoy it and it’s FUN.
I think it’s great if you’re trying to bang out a century with a robopacer, but I noticed last night that one of my pacer compatriots took coffee breaks at every major climb. Convenient way to avoid the work. 😆
Same this morning with Coco. They should try to restrict coffee breaks to flat stretches.
Maybe they should make you pay for each coffee break in the same session , 10k drops for the 1st, 100k drops for the 2nd, 1mill for the 3rd……😁.