Economy

Café Tacuba is the dream name of Salvadoran Manolo Gonzalez, who managed to start a company offering the best grain grown in his country, a much-needed venture that is now growing at the foot of the Swiss Alps.

The name is not random, it is from the municipality where Gonzalez was born, the scion of a productive family, which since 2006 has seen the possibility of the transition from farming to selling perfumes in Europe’s financial heart.

A few years ago I had a tourist business in El Salvador and through it I got to know Europe. While I was doing this, I saw a coffee shop selling coffee from El Salvador and it caught my attention and I said, ‘One day – without knowing anything – I would like to have a Salvadoran coffee business in Europe,’ he remembers.

The dream came true, and four years ago, he embarked on the adventure of creating a brand that he created in the name of the city in which he was born: Tacuba.

“You don’t know the challenges and hardships we went through, it was amazing to go from selling a cup, cappuccino, to selling hundreds a day. What we went through was incredible. The businessman who already has two stores and plans to open another in 2021,” says We had a year in which we had no income at all, and everything was outside and outside. “

Fair deal.

Gonzalez explains that as an immigrant, before opening his coffee shop, he worked in factories and construction, but had always dreamed of starting his own business. Something he accomplished with the help of his wife and other people.

As a coffee producer, it is believed that selling the drink is a privilege. “It is a pride and a feeling that I cannot describe because I am also a farmer, and to see and feel the effort that one goes into producing those grains, and the love and dedication that one has to the farmer, despite the lower prices,” he added.

Besides selling on its premises, Café Tacopa buys – without intermediaries – a lot of Salvadoran produce of bourbon, bacas, bacamara and geisha varieties.

After contacting the producers, they review grain standards, as they strive to obtain the best quality and compliance of the producers with their employees. “Our main slogan is to be fair and straightforward,” he said.

González and his partners import green beans by ship and carry out their roasting operations in Lucerna, where they continue to attract new consumers of beans using natural processes such as “honey” and from sale to other restaurants and directly through cafetacuba. the classroom.

He concludes, “Every time they buy a kilo of coffee or a cup, I can only imagine everything that happened to bring this coffee bean into a customer’s hand.”