Café Integral

César Vega grew up around his family's coffee farms in Nicaragua's Jinotega region before studying at NYU, and started Café Integral in 2012 after Stumptown and La Colombe both turned him down as a green coffee supplier. He imported around five hundred pounds of Nicaraguan beans himself, put roughly ten thousand dollars into a roaster, and began roasting out of a friend's Soho clothing boutique before this Elizabeth Street storefront opened in 2016.

The shop still imports directly from growers in Nicaragua and Colombia rather than buying through a middleman, and Vega reportedly spends around three months of every year back in Nicaragua working with the farming families he sources from. The room itself is spare and quiet, pastel toned and unfussy, built around the coffee rather than around seating or scene.