Pioneering Specialty Cafés: Coffee Shop Owners and the Rise of Specialty Café Culture in Puebla, Mexico | 25, Issue 24
Scholar and PhD candidate JORDAN BUCHANAN shares their research into the rise of the specialty café scene in Puebla state, Mexico, focusing on the journey and testimony of coffee-shop owners.
Introduction by MARIO FERNÁNDEZ-ALDUENDA, SCA Technical Officer
Between 1990 and 1995, I lived in Puebla, a state in Mexico, for my college studies. Thirty years ago, and coming from a coffee-producing family, I was frustrated at the absence of good coffee shops in town. The few places that focused on coffee carried a very dark roast (which disguised the coffee’s character) and relied on selling milk-based drinks.
In spring 2025, I accompanied my daughter to visit the same university where I studied. Walking around the university campus, I was surprised to find more than a dozen specialty coffee shops. My daughter and I visited at least five of them and they were all excellent! I confess I envied my daughter a little bit—if she ends up going to that university, she will have the opportunity I did not have to enjoy those incredible coffee shops during her studies. I could not help but wonder: when, and how, did these coffee shops get here?
The following article tells us part of the story. The author, Jordan Buchanan, introduces us to a few pioneers who instilled a passion for coffee in the younger generation. The coffee shops portrayed here are inspiring examples of successful specialty coffee businesses in a coffee-producing country.
However, not all the pioneering businesses from the early days survived to be interviewed by the author. Between 2006 and 2009, my wife and I owned a specialty coffee shop in Xalapa, just two hours’ drive from Puebla. It was the first coffee shop in that region to incorporate elements of what we would now consider “Third Wave,” and we put a lot of attention into coffee quality. Unfortunately, our coffee shop went out of business. The reason? In the words of several contemporary coffee friends, it was ahead of its time. Perhaps now, in today’s Mexico café culture, it would survive. I would thus like to believe that the thriving Mexico café culture of today exists because of seeds that were planted over decades—not just by those successful businesses that still live on, but also by the many more that were lost along the way.
While many specialty coffee consumers and professionals associate Mexico’s specialty coffee sector with coffee-speckled mountains and green coffee exports, the country has a vivacious urban specialty café scene.
Today, specialty cafés are widespread across Mexico, and almost any newly opened café carries the “specialty” label with pride. This triumph of specialty café culture in Mexico has occurred thanks to the key actors who pioneered the trade in Mexican cities between 2008 and 2020 (before the onset of the Covid pandemic). As a scholar interested in specialty coffee and urban environments, I was interested in tracing the growth of specialty coffee consumption in Mexico. Within my research, I aimed to challenge the presumed binary of “producing” and “consuming” nations and to defy the “poverty narrative” that often dominates coffee studies on Latin America.
Between September 2020 and April 2021, I conducted interviews with six coffee shop owners from five cafés in Puebla city.[1] I selected coffee shops that self-identified as “specialty cafés” prior to 2018,[2] meaning they had witnessed, and contributed to, the rise of the specialty movement in Mexico. My research focused on coffee shop owners who—at the time of my research—were running successful operations and had made profound contributions to specialty coffee culture.[3]
Planting the Café Culture: The Emergence of Specialty Cafés in Puebla City
Capital city bias affects many of our perceptions of national culture. Mexico City dominates many internationals’ perceptions of and associations with the country. To understand the rise of specialty café culture in Mexico, we need to move beyond the capital. The rise there does not represent the rise across the country, as specialty pioneers in other cities learned from Mexico City actors and spread specialty café businesses in other parts of the country. However, it is worth recognizing that significant cafés such as PassMar and Café Avellaneda were some of the first to take up the specialty ambition and influenced how people moved the trade forward. The Mexican Coffee Exposition, held every year in September in Mexico City, started in 2002 and was another major influence in bringing people together in the specialty trade, inspiring them to open specialty cafés.
Puebla city, the fourth-largest city in Mexico, is a major industrial and administrative center, serving as the capital of the coffee-producing state of Puebla. Its specialty café scene developed concurrently with Mexico City’s. One of the people I interviewed, Franco, is recognized as “the pioneer of specialty cafés” among his peers because of his early influence in constructing the culture in the city. Pasticel, Franco’s café, was founded in 2008 as a pastry shop that sold coffee on the side. However, as Franco’s coffee knowledge deepened, he became immersed in specialty coffee, even leaving his studies to dedicate himself to the trade. Pasticel’s early days were challenging, and Franco found himself sleeping on the floor of Pasticel, unable to afford both a living and a retail space. With perseverance, he overcame these difficulties and created a center for specialty coffee enthusiasts in Puebla, consolidating his idea of specialty by 2011. Franco’s café then became a place of learning for other future specialty café owners. Two baristas, Marco and Mario, were initiated into the specialty world by working with Franco, and both went on to set up two eminent specialty cafés: Marco’s Brewers in Atlixco, Puebla state, and Mario’s Café Cultura in the historic center of Puebla city.
Image 1. Marco, the owner and founder of Marco's Brewers began his coffee journey after a serendipitous visit to a coffee exhibition. Image 2. The courtyard at Marco's Brewers in Atlixco. Photos supplied by Marco.
Marco’s entry to the coffee world was serendipitous. In 2004, his twin brother, José Luis, was developing an interest in coffee and had organized a trip to the Mexican Coffee Exposition in Mexico City. When José Luis was injured that morning, Marco agreed to go in his place and report back what he learned—despite his initial disinterest in coffee. What he found there altered his vision. At the barista championship, Marco gained a deeper understanding of the barista’s role in the coffee supply chain. He explained that he “fell in love with coffee because the barista is the voice of the producer, the roaster, of all of the production chain of coffee.” “The barista,” he learned, “is the one that has to give voice to all these people and all the work that they do to obtain this wonderful bean.” On return, Marco went back to his life as a musician, but the seed of coffee desire had been planted. He later joined Franco at Pasticel as a barista and experimented with a coffee stall at a festival in his hometown of Atlixco. In 2013, Marco opened Brewers Café to permanently bring the specialty scene to his beloved Atlixco.
The other direct offshoot of Pasticel was Café Cultura led by Mario. Having worked in other trades, Mario’s year as a barista inspired him to deepen his knowledge of specialty coffee and to aspire to opening his own specialty café. He then spent a year working with his wife in Baja California’s tourist economy to save money before returning to Puebla to realize his ambition of opening his café. In 2014, Mario opened the first specialty café in Puebla’s historic center. The process was challenging, as many city residents were yet to embrace specialty consumer culture. He recalled a day during his first month when he sold just one coffee to a friend, which led him to question his decision to open a café. But Mario’s resilience triumphed; he determined that any day that he sold more than one coffee was a step forward. Mario persevered, and today he tells that story with pride. Thanks to his contribution, Puebla’s historic center is now saturated with specialty cafés that benefited from the work of early specialty entrepreneurs who influenced coffee culture in the city.
Image 3. A barista brews at Café Cultura. The Puebla Coffee Passport on the bar is testament to how many specialty cafés there are to visit in the state. Image supplied by Café Cultura.
Coexistence and Collaboration: Café Owners Find Belonging
These first-mover cafés influenced the growing awareness and presence of specialty café culture in the city. Two other eminent cafés that shaped the rise of specialty culture in Puebla were Antonio’s Panela Canela (opened 2015) and Gabriel and Laura’s Miel Negra (opened 2017). Both cafés built on the momentum generated by their predecessors, thereby accelerating the growth of specialty café culture in Puebla.
Antonio’s journey into coffee was unique. Having previously worked in the wine trade, he initially did not consume coffee because he was indifferent to the taste. In 2011, a period of illness led him to drink coffee to boost his energy. Drinking it more regularly sparked his interest and desire to learn more about coffee.
In 2013, he discovered specialty coffee by attending a workshop on the topic in Puebla. This experience solidified his desire to pursue coffee as his new venture: he studied more about specialty coffee, learned how to roast it, and opened Panela Canela in 2015 in Cholula—an independent municipality connected to Puebla city’s periphery. Antonio explained that he finds the sense of coexistence and connectedness in coffee appealing. “Each coffee and each barista is a piece of the chain that functions as a complete unit,” he shared. “I believe that we are all pieces inside this chain.”
Antonio explained that he finds the sense of coexistence and connectedness in coffee appealing. “Each coffee and each barista is a piece of the chain that functions as a complete unit,” he shared. “I believe that we are all pieces inside this chain.”
Miel Negra was the joint creation of Gabriel and Laura that advanced the specialty café scene in Puebla. Laura worked in an administrative role in Mexico City before she decided to move to Puebla to be with family and seek meaningful work. Gabriel worked in hospitality as a waiter, barman, and supervisor. The two got together while on their different career journeys and shared a passion for coffee. In 2016, they decided to collaborate to launch a professional project that allowed them to use each other’s skills and dedicate their professional lives to a common cause; Miel Negra was the result. Gabriel and Laura see it as a personal and collaborative project: “We see it as our child, a product we both made.”
Image 4. Laura and Gabriel, the founders of Miel Negra. Image supplied by Miel Negra.
Each protagonist in these origin stories encountered specialty coffee during their own life journey. Working in other trades, none of my interviewees had imagined embarking on specialty coffee careers, until they encountered specialty through their proximity to coffee growing in Puebla state, and their own coffee consumption habits. The next section explores what those key factors were that influenced the motivations and decisions to fully commit to the specialty movement.
Watering the Café Culture: Motivations for Running a Specialty Café
Waking up each day to smell the coffee is a cliché for most of us, but for these pioneers of specialty café culture in Puebla, it was a part of their daily routine as they conducted the laborious task of running a café. It is easy to have romantic dreams of running a café; to pursue these dreams is another matter. What motivated these people to dedicate their daily life to flipping the AeroPress? The specialty coffee shop owners I interviewed expressed three common motivations for taking on the challenge of running a specialty café: the desire to learn about specialty coffee, a passion for work, and a desire to contribute to society.
Knowledge acquisition was a major motivation for these entrepreneurs to launch their business. All these Poblano[4] café owners discovered specialty coffee in Mexico and, while some expanded their knowledge through international activities, largely cultivated their knowledge domestically—at the annual national expo, through workshops, or by visiting other cafés. The learning process was crucial to changing these owners’ perceptions of specialty coffee, and their consequent decision to open a café was a direct response to what they could do with this new knowledge and passion.
Passionate engagement with their work was a common theme among the specialty coffee shop owners’ motivations. The people I interviewed had all dedicated themselves to different lines of work prior to coffee, and a passion for coffee and work motivated them to change careers. Gabriel explained that his motivations were “not so much about earnings. [They were] about passion.” For these owners, the traditional business logic of maximizing profits was not the guiding force; instead, maximizing their enjoyment of their passion was the major impetus.
Image 5. Paticel was founded by Franco as a bakery with “coffee on the side,” but increased its focus on specialty coffee. Image supplied by Franco.
A significant aspect of each owner’s coffee story was their desire to contribute to society. Two common goals were to support the coffee chain and to offer quality coffee to people in their city. Having themselves experienced learning and fulfilment through coffee, each owner expressed a desire to support others. They described farmers as valuable members of the supply chain, deserving of care and support, and underscored the need to improve the lives of rural laborers. For example, Laura of Miel Negra felt that specialty coffee was a “chain of support” for the lives of rural communities. Additionally, owners stressed the importance of improving baristas’ training and work conditions, as baristas are another core element of the coffee chain. Mario of Café Cultura recognized that “all of the work behind the coffee can be lost at that last moment if the barista is not well trained.”
By setting up a coffee shop, owners were able to fulfill this contribution to the chain and to promote specialty coffee to the wider public. One of the challenges owners faced was convincing consumers to move from traditional commercial coffee to specialty coffee. Franco of Pasticel described how “many people consume burnt coffee and commercial coffee. They do not appreciate Mexican coffee and its origin or character. I try to share all these things in the coffee shop.” The desire to instill pride in Mexican coffee and share their deep passion and joy for specialty coffee significantly influenced their actions as pioneers, extending their love for coffee to the consuming public.
Image 6. Staff at Paticel, with Franco front, second from the left. Photo supplied by Paticel.
Harvesting the Coffee Culture: By Way of Conclusion
Thanks to the efforts of the specialty café pioneers in Puebla from 2008 to 2020, the city now enjoys the results of that labor. The pioneers endeavored to change coffee culture in the city, were faced by challenges, but were highly motivated to promote specialty coffee. Today, almost any new coffee shop that opens in the city boasts a specialty status. Rarely do people question whether specialty is quality, and almost never whether it is worthwhile. Specialty coffee has become the norm in Puebla, and in Mexico as a whole. We owe that to the resilience and passion of the specialty café pioneers. ◊
JORDAN BUCHANAN is completing their PhD at the University of California San Diego in Latin American History with a focus on urbanism. As part of their professional research, they examine the rise of specialty café culture in Latin America as a way to increase our understanding of urban life in the region and better appreciate Latin America’s relationship with global capitalism.
References
[1]I also interviewed coffee shop owners in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Oaxaca city, but have chosen to focus on Puebla city for this piece.
You can read the full journal article, including the research in Oaxaca city at: Jordan Buchanan,
“Communicating Coffee: Owners and Workers’ Role and Experiences during the Rise of Specialty Cafés in Two Mexican Cities, 2010–20,” The Latin Americanist 67, no. 2 (2023): 121, 154, https://dx.doi. org/10.1353/tla.2023.a899971.
[2]Because the Covid lockdowns affected the entire sector and the evolution of specialty café culture so profoundly, I chose to focus on business owners who had established solid foundations prior to these lockdowns.
[3]It’s important to note that I chose to interview specialty coffee trailblazers, whose experiences, although often relatable, are not universal. All coffee shops face challenges, and, despite perseverance, skill, passion, and entrepreneurship, not all succeed commercially.
[4] Poblano is a term used describe residents of Puebla, as well as a type of chili.
We hope you are as excited as we are about the release of 25, Issue 24. This issue of 25 is made possible with the contributions of specialty coffee businesses who support the activities of the Specialty Coffee Association through its underwriting and sponsorship programs. Learn more about our underwriters here.
