Coffee 'Beans' Are Actually Fruit Seeds
Coffee beans are not beans at all - they're seeds from the coffee cherry fruit. The fruit is sweet and edible, often used to make drinks in coffee-growing regions.
About this fact
Despite being called 'beans,' coffee beans are actually the seeds of a fruit called a coffee cherry. The coffee plant produces bright red or purple cherries that contain two seeds (the 'beans') inside. The cherry itself is sweet and edible, with a taste often described as a cross between a grape and a cranberry. In many coffee-growing regions, people eat the cherries fresh or use them to make beverages like cascara tea. The term 'bean' likely stuck because the dried seeds resemble legume beans in appearance. The fruit-to-seed processing involves removing the outer fruit layer (pulp) and drying the seeds. Interestingly, the coffee cherry contains caffeine too, though in lower concentrations than the seeds. Some specialty coffee shops now serve drinks made from coffee cherry pulp, closing the loop on this agricultural process.