Interior of the recent Flor & Seed coffee shop in Senior Town San Diego. All photos courtesy of Flor & Seed Coffee Roasters.
Startup coffee roasting company Flor & Seed Coffee Roastery opened its first brick-and-mortar coffee shop in Senior Town San Diego, offering mighty family and culinary ties to its neighboring country just a few miles to the south.
The 640-square-foot cafe showcases Mexican coffee offerings from microlots, many of which come directly from farmers in states that have sometimes been overlooked, including Nayarit, Puebla and Guerrero. Coffees from well-known coffee-producing states Oaxaca and Chiapas round out the menu.
Along Curtis batch brewers and espresso bar, the ponderous bar offers three different Mexican coffees at any given time. Each coffee in the ponderous bar is assigned a specific brewing method that best highlights its unique characteristics.
“If you order Nayarit Black Honey off the menu, it’s extracted the way we’ve always thought was best,” Flor & Seed co-founder Yan Yanez recently told Daily Coffee News. “It could be AeroPress, V60 or espresso. We also have a Nimbus H-1500 for reverse osmosis because we think water is one of the most essential elements of making good coffee.”
Yanez and Flor & Seed co-founder Leo Nunez further express their Mexican culinary heritage through homemade chocolate, vanilla and piloncillo syrups for drinks like cafe de olla, cafe tres leches and more, often served alongside pastries, molletes and breads from a local Latina-owned bakery Neighborhood Breadand Mexican-style open sandwiches.
Yanez, who was born in Mexico City, and Nunez, who was born in the United States to Mexican parents, have known each other since they were teenagers. Both have extensive experience in the specialty coffee industry, including retail, importing and equipment service.
“We were friends for a long time and would go to Mexico City and other places in Mexico to drink Mexican coffee at specialty bars,” Yanez said. “We were just amazed at how good Mexican coffee could be, and how could it have such a lifeless connotation in the U.S.? It was crazy to us not to understand why this good coffee wasn’t making it here.”
Immense murals, including one of a fellow grower from Chiapas, add color to the mostly white, streamlined interior of Flor & Seed. A bank of seven hanging lamps illuminates the baristas’ handling of beans.
The coffees are roasted in Yanez on Love a roastery owned by a San Diego-based company Dark Horse Coffee at its Mission Gorge facility.
Production has increased with the opening of cafes, increased online sales and the company’s twice-weekly presence at farmers’ markets. Yanez now hopes to expand wholesale growth to more widely distribute Mexican-grown coffee.
“Our intention is to serve our communities, to bring good coffee to Senior Town, especially from Mexico,” Yanez said. “We’re just trying to bring something different to the community, not too far from our roots.”
Flor & Seed Coffee Roastery is now open 3985 Harney St. in San Diego. Tell DCN editors about your recent café or roastery here.
Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the deputy editor of Daily Coffee News at Roast Magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
