Guatemalan Coffee Finds a New Home in Manor Park
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La Coop founder Juan Luis Salazar welcomes guests to the NW DC shop.
By Matt Yan | Photos courtesy of La Coop | From the Edible DC Fall 2020 issue
After forming a cooperative of coffee farmers in Guatemala in 2006, Juan Luis Salazar brought their coffee to DC this past July, opening La Coop Coffee Co. in the Northwest neighborhood of Manor Park.
Salazar’s motivation to found the Asociacion de Caficultores de Union Cantinil (ASOCUC) came when he realized the coffee market in his hometown of Huehuetenango was completely unfair: People acting as middlemen in the coffee industry were not paying farmers a fair price. The ASOCUC cooperative eliminated the middleman by exporting their coffee directly to DC. By doing this, his farmers are paid 100% more than the typical Guatemalan coffee market, and it “serves as motivation to produce better coffee,” he tells Edible DC.
Salazar believes that this is the only true coffee collaborative, in DC. Salazar says, “The name La Coop comes from the word cooperativa in Spanish which means cooperative. I founded a cooperative in my home town about 13 years ago with the goal of helping farmers earn more for their coffee. Members of my family, my neighbors and others in my community are still part of this cooperative today and I’m sourcing coffee directly from them. And, by doing this, I’ve been able to pay the farmers more than Fair Trade, and my goal is as I grow La Coop here I can eventually source from other coffee cooperatives.”
Harvesting coffee in Union Cantinil, Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
Salazar works with farmers utilizing micro-lots—each lot farmed by one individual farmer— and the beans must fit a standard profile of fruity notes with hints of citrus and chocolate to be eligible for purchase.
Ultimately, Salazar’s goal is to create a private company to trade his family’s coffee beans. For now, though, the goal is to expose this area to some really tasty coffee.
“We are kind of trying to offer a different type of coffee,” Salazar says. “The coffee that we serve here is of the best quality. Whoever comes to our shop knows that we don’t sell coffee with flavored syrups.”
So, skip the pumpkin-spiced coffee this fall season, and order up a full-bodied brew at La Coop Coffee Co.
La Coop Coffee house & Roastery in the manor park neighborhood of NW DC.
