NOMAD began in London in 2011, when Jordi Mestre, after two years in the city’s cafés, set up a coffee cart and served at its street markets. He won the Spanish barista championship in 2012 and again in 2013, placed fifteenth at the world championship in Vienna and roasted at Nude Coffee Roasters before selling the cart and moving the project to Barcelona. NOMAD opened in El Born in 2014 with a space where coffee is the only protagonist. Fran, the first hire that summer, is now co-owner and head of coffee.

Coffee Bar, in a passage in El Born, is that original site and NOMAD’s most emblematic: everyday coffee at a minimalist bar without distractions, “just coffee, done well”. Petit NOMAD is an elbow bar by Plaça de Catalunya, inspired by Italian cafés, with pastries from Pa de Kilo, the bakery NOMAD started with Oswaldo Brito in 2020. Frutas Selectas in Poblenou is the former roastery turned café, remodelled by Jordi Veciana and Sky Maunsell, with a kitchen and a lunch menu. NOMAD Every Day in the Raval ran from 2016 to 2022 and was sold on when the company moved its energy to the new roastery and to wholesale.

Roasting started in Poblenou in 2015 at Roaster’s Home, gained a restored Probat UG22 in 2017 and from 2020 built Cal NOMAD, a larger Poblenou roastery that has run two roasting machines since 2023 and also hosts tastings, wholesale training and The Coffee Academy, the training arm directed by Ivette Vera since 2022. NOMAD released its first transparency report in 2021, became a certified B Corp in 2023 and supplies cafés in Europe, the United States, Canada, China and Korea. The online shop sorts the coffees into New Arrivals, Classics, Specials, Competición and Limited Edition. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: NOMAD Coffee