Right Side Coffee began in 2012 in the car park of its founder’s house. Joaquín Parra had started out in his family’s green coffee import business, and his early fascination with cupping turned into an obsession with roasting: he won the Spanish SCA roasting championships in 2013 and 2017 and went on to the World Coffee Roasting Championship in Nice and Guangzhou. Lara San Miguel joined in 2014, and the two of them built the long-term relationships with producers in the Americas and Africa that remain the company’s foundation. The name refers to the right hemisphere of the brain, the side that governs creativity, because the starting budget stretched to two sacks of green coffee and little else.

The roastery is in Castelldefels, on the coast south of Barcelona, where two restored Probat machines, an L12 from 1993 and a UG22 from 1959, are fired three times a week. Right Side now imports all of its green coffee directly, from small producers and cooperatives to Cup of Excellence champions, and has worked with some growers on new fermentation and drying methods. The manifesto ends with “never forget origins”. Visits to the roastery are by appointment.

Right Side Coffee Bar opened in 2023 in the Gothic Quarter, the company’s first café. The room is an oasis with large windows and plenty of natural light, serving its filter and espresso coffees alongside artisan pastries and breakfasts. Each coffee is sold with its country, region, producer, variety, altitude, process and the year the direct-trade relationship began, and most lots are sold as separate filter and espresso roasts. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf