Colombino Coffee now brewing coffee, cacao in South Hills
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
The fun thing about coffee, for Sebastian Lloreda, is keeping atop coffee farming and production trends and working with small farmers from his home country. “If I get to know that someone is just doing really good things in Colombia, I just call them,” Lloreda said, noting he sources beans from farms like Barista World Championship-winning Inmaculada Coffee Farms, female-run Mina Rica and other leaders of innovation in coffee bean fermentation.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Sebastian Lloreda grew up in Cali, Colombia, and brought his passion for excellent coffee and cacao to the South Hills when he moved to the Pittsburgh area several years ago. Lloreda serves Colombian coffee and cacao sourced from small farms and roasted in the South Hills, homemade nut milks and other delicacies at Colombino Coffee along South Park Road.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Coffee and cacao are the life force of Colombino Coffee in Bethel Park, Sebastian Lloreda’s second location but first retail cafe. Lloreda made connections with coffee, cacao and sugar cane farmers while living and working in Colombia and uses those connections to source beans for his coffee shop.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Colombino Coffee serves up a variety of coffee and cacao (drinking chocolate) drinks along South Park Road in Bethel Park, the company’s second location. Sebastian Lloreda opened the shop where Judy’s Java Joint used to be in April of this year.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Colombian coffee and cacao are on sale at Colombino Coffee, for those looking to brew a cup of morning joe or enjoy a sweet treat at home, along with other quick, healthy snacks and syrups. The shop also offers homemade and locally made baked goods.
PHotos: Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Before stepping into the café, visitors to Colombino Coffee in the South Hills are greeted by the scent of coffee and a colorful mural, a vestige of the shop’s previous life as Judy’s Java Joint. Sebastian Lloreda took over the space in April and serves authentic Colombian coffee and cacao drinks along with mainstream drinks, homemade and locally made baked goods and other treats.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Sebastian Lloreda hand-grinds pistachios and other nuts to create homemade nut milks for use in Colombino Coffee’s artisanal lattes.
If you can’t enjoy coffee at its source, have it sourced straight to your cup.
That’s the way a cup of joe is served at Colombino Coffee, a cozy shop that opened along South Park Road in Bethel Park this spring, replacing longtime local favorite Judy’s Java Joint.
“I grew up in Colombia. That’s my home country,” said Sebastian Lloreda, a tall, dark-haired coffee lover with a warm presence and easy smile. “We were trying to find a name that … spells out that we are from Colombia without having to say that we are from Colombia.”
The name encapsulates the spirit of the coffee shop, whose earth tones, ample seating and homespun decor welcome guests and whose menu is inspired by Lloreda’s heritage.
As a young man, Lloreda sometimes accompanied his father on business trips to coffee, cacao, sugar cane and tropical fruit farms in Colombia, where his dad ran a business that helped farmers develop projects and secure funds for their endeavors.
As an adult, Lloreda joined the family business and started connecting with Colombian farmers. His parents moved to America about a decade ago, and Lloreda joined them from Cali, Colombia, in the tristate area in 2014.
He lived in Morgantown for eight months, where he inadvertently started advertising for his future coffee shop.
“I started working at a tech company. I also was doing a side hustle, like driving Uber and these delivery gigs, and that’s how I really got to know, to meet a lot of people,” Lloreda said. “I used to hit the road, 5 o’clock in the morning, but I used to brew a batch of coffee, and I just bring it in my car. When I was picking up passengers, I just hand them a cup of coffee.”
One morning, Lloreda handed the Colombian coffee to a gentleman who later became one of his business partners.
Lloreda always dreamed of opening a coffee shop in the U.S., and when he moved to Pittsburgh, began learning more about how cafes look and operate in this area. He realized roasting his own beans would set his coffee apart.
“So I started my journey learning how to roast. I started reading a lot of books and started watching videos. I used to rent some roasting machines just to get my coffee roasted. Then I started doing farmers markets,” he said.
The opportunity to open a coffee shop in Pittsburgh’s Strip District presented itself and, because it arose during the pandemic, Lloreda got creative. He opened a grab-and-go style coffee shop along Penn Avenue, which was met with great success.
“I got this opportunity,” Lloreda said, waving his hand inside the welcoming South Hills location, “and just saw this option to buy and yeah, I’ll jump into this.”
Colombino opened in Bethel Park on April 1 and already casual and ritualistic coffee drinkers alike consider the café their go-to for freshly brewed coffee, handcrafted artisanal and specialty lattes, homemade empanadas and other locally sourced baked goods and sweets.
The connections Lloreda made while living and working in Colombia have proved valuable; he imports unroasted coffee and cacao beans from small farms and roasts them in the South Hills.
Yes, you read that right: Colombino is also making a name for itself, thanks to the cacao drinks Lloreda and his employees craft daily.
“I was thinking of ways to make it (Colombino) different from other coffee shops, because for the most part, they do coffee and tea. I said, I don’t want tea. I want something else, something cool,” Lloreda said, smiling wide.
In the mid-aughts, Lloreda helped a company in Bogota, Columbia, finance and set up a bean-to-bar cacao manufacturing company. “That’s how I got involved in cacao as well,” he said, and now the company is one that supplies him cacao.
“It’s a complimentary thing for the coffee. I call it ‘drinking chocolate.’ You can make it hot, cold, whatever you want. You can also use it to bake and just as an ingredient,” Lloreda said.
Naturally, one Colombino menu item marries coffee and cacao: the Mocha, “which is like the kind of signature drink here,” he said.
“It has the best coffee you can get, the cacao itself and just any milk you want to pick. It’s really unique.”
Also unique is the fact that Lloreda hand-grinds pistachios, almonds and other nuts to craft homemade nut milks for use in artisanal drinks, and the coffee drink sweeteners are also made in-house.
“In Colombia, outside of coffee and cacao, we also grow sugar cane. In Colombia, we make something called panela, which is unrefined sugar,” Lloreda said, noting the pan contains all the nutrients of sugar cane. “What they do is they squeeze all the juice that’s in the sugar cane. We evaporate the juice, and once the juice is evaporated, we obtain like a honey. That’s our main syrup.”
That syrup flavors everything from Colombino’s dulche de leche latte to one of the best-selling items on the menu, the campesino coffee – which Lloreda calls farmer’s coffee.
“It’s very popular to make … it’s basically the raw sugar, the pan, we add some spices in that and we just mix it with milk and the coffee itself. It’s really good,” said Lloreda.
Lloreda takes pride in his artistry and enjoys connecting with customers, whether they’re first-time Colombino guests or regular visitors whose order he and staffers have memorized. He hopes people understand just what a special drink coffee is and enjoy the variety of ways Colombino serves up small farm-sourced beans and intentional drinks daily.
“It’s a very versatile drink. It’s super healthy. You can just drink it black as-is, and it’s really good. And from there you can build a bunch of options, you can just flavor it, you can make a lot of methods to extract the base flavor. It’s like wine, in a way, but it doesn’t have the buzz thing, so it’s kind of pretty cool,” Lloreda said. “It’s just very versatile and healthy. There’s a lot of room for innovation there.”
Lloreda is looking to expand Colombino with a new retail location in the next couple years, but for now, he’s enjoying establishing Colombino in the South Hills.
“It’s not work for me,” Lloreda said. “I’m having fun.”
For more on Colombino Coffee, visit https://www.colombino.com.