At Varietale Café inside the El Dorado international airport in Bogotá. Courtesy photo.
Throughout the world, airport coffee tends to be like traveling back in time 20 years. The coffee itself is often anonymous, over-roasted and begging for milk and sugar — maybe even some vanilla syrup — in order to be softened for pleasant consumption.
Today’s larger airports also tend to be heavy on international chains. For tired international travelers, this might provide some warming familiarity, yet what’s in the cup can leave something to be desired.
One of the most heavily trafficked airports among coffee professionals is the main international airport in El Dorado International Airport (BOG) Bogotá, Colombia. While a number of coffee shops and cafes dot El Dorado’s sprawling national and international terminals — including chains such as Dunkin and Juan Valdez — at least two locally owned and operated coffee shops are focusing on premium Colombian-grown specialty coffee: Xue Café and Varietale Café.
Xue Café. Daily Coffee News photo by Jordan Buchanan.
DCN recently spoke to the operators of each of these cafes to discuss airport operations and their approach to promoting quality Colombian coffees to national and international guests.
Xue Café
In 2014, the coffee production and roasting company Xue Café opened its first coffee shop in the international departures terminal at El Dorado.
A multi-generational coffee company led by CEO Olga Londono and her daughter Martina Hakim, Xue Cafe gets its coffees from its own farm, Manantiales Del Frontino, where 10 different varieties grow. The farm’s first harvest in 2011 won a quality award from what was then the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), now the SCA.
Xue Café. Daily Coffee News photo by Jordan Buchanan.
While Olga has been involved in coffee production since 1995, and specialty coffee production since 2008, the coffee shop business has been driven by Martina, who said, “We want Colombians and the world to know that Colombia has luxury quality products.”
This past August, Xue Cafe opened its second airport outlet in a domestic departures terminal, expanding the company’s reach. In both terminals, guests can find freshly prepared coffee drinks and limited-edition bags of roasted coffee.
Varietale Café
Abel Calderón has been running Varietale Café, a coffee shop destination in the heart of Bogotá, since 2014. In 2021, he expanded the business to include a location in an El Dorado international terminal.
While the original shop continues to serve a large number of students from nearby campuses, plus local workers, the airport location opened up a much broader audience.
“It was a chance to serve many people specialty coffee,” Calderón said, “local or foreign travelers.”
Varietale Café. Courtesy photo.
Last month Varietale opened its second airport location in another international terminal of El Dorado, offering a genuine specialty coffee shop experience despite the bustling airport traffic.
These shops give international guests something of a diplomatic representation of Colombian coffee. Colombia’s reputation as a high-quality coffee-producing country is deeply established, yet shops Like Xue and Varietale present clear signals to travelers that Colombia is a prime destination for coffee consumption, too.
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Jordan Buchanan
Jordan Buchanan is completing their PhD in Latin American history at UC San Diego. They research the rise of the specialty coffee industry in Latin America. Jordan is from Edinburgh, Scotland, but mostly drinks their coffee where they live in Mexico.
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