The First Encounter: When Coffee Stopped Being Just a Drink
My journey from a regular coffee consumer to purpose-driven coffee began at a crêperie in Highbury & Islington, London, where coffee was just another item on the menu. But one training day changed everything. It wasn’t just about learning to pull a good espresso or texture milk — it was about realizing that behind every cup were stories, cultures, and deep inequalities.
What struck me most was the stark contrast between producing countries (where coffee is grown with endless effort) and consuming countries (where we drink it without a second thought). That contradiction became an obsession.
Specialty Coffee: Purpose-Driven Coffee… and Contradictions
My thirst for knowledge led me to James Hoffmann, whose videos and books opened my eyes to specialty coffee. I learned about the coffee plant, about varieties, roast profiles, extraction methods, and the importance of traceability.
I found work at a specialty café in Bank (London), where coffee was treated with reverence. There, I wasn’t just paid to make coffee — I was paid to study it. Every day was a new lesson: dialing in grinders, analyzing TDS, tasting different filter coffees, learning about origins and flavors, practicing latte art… With every coffee I made, I thought about the growers and did my best in their honor. But even there, amid all that passion for coffee, what mattered most were the numbers — how many coffees we sold — more than any true connection with the people who grew it.
Between that burnout and other circumstances in my life, I decided to travel the world for a year. On those journeys, specialty coffee became my thread for discovering new places (but that’s a story for another blog).
Specialty Coffee in Spain: Ethics on the Menu, Exploitation in Practice
When I returned to Spain, I wanted to stay in the sector, but the contrast with London was stark. I worked in several cafés in Madrid and noticed that: cleaning the machine wasn’t a priority (at least not as thoroughly as I’d learned in London); knowledge about specialty coffee was more superficial; and although the pace was slower, it was also less rigorous.
In Barcelona, I thought I’d found my ideal spot: a small café where the owner talked about fair trade, transparency, and respect for producers. But soon I saw the reality: the purchase prices were still unfair, there was no real connection with the farms, and it was really just marketing — not philosophy.
The same happened at the next two places. I realized that many specialty coffee shops talked about revolution, but kept replicating the same old system.
Beyond Greenwashing: Searching for Purpose-Driven Coffee in an Unequal Industry
While working at these places, I kept researching and found that there are people who don’t settle for specialty coffee greenwashing — people who talk about coffee pricing and who try to build alternatives beyond empty certifications. The problem was never the coffee itself, but the system that turns it into a luxury product while ignoring those who grow it.
Today, from outside the industry, I keep battling with keyboards instead of espresso machines. I invite you to reflect on the injustices — but also to celebrate those who are doing things differently: those who pay dignified prices, who name coffee growers as collaborators rather than anonymous suppliers, who drink every cup as a conscious act.
At A Coffee & A Story, we know that a coffee bean can be much more than a drink: it’s a bridge between worlds, a political gesture, and above all, an unpaid debt to the hands that harvest it.
