Cafezal, Milan — Coffee Dash

Cafezal means coffee plantation in Portuguese, a reference to Brazil, where founder and CEO Carlos Bitencourt was born. An engineer who worked as a management consultant in the United Kingdom and Germany, he started in coffee in 2012, visited plantations in Brazil in 2013 and settled in Milan. Cafezal roasted its first bag in 2017 and opened its first shop in Brera in 2018, the first specialty coffee roastery in Milan.

The Coffee Hub opened in 2022, east of the centre. It is a 500 square metre space where the coffee is selected, roasted and served, with a café, a kitchen, pastry, brunch, aperitivo, a coworking area, a members’ club and the Milano Coffee Academy. The Academy runs fourteen home-barista courses, from sensory skills and V60 brewing to moka, latte art and roasting foundations, alongside professional and corporate courses. Tables at the Hub can be booked online.

Cafezal’s other shops are a 50 square metre café in the Magenta district that recalls the 1920s; Porta Venezia, opposite Piazza Cincinnato, with a takeaway window and the company’s own pastry and bread lab; a café at BiM Bicocca, the regeneration project on the former Pirelli site; and a sixth coffee boutique at Gae Aulenti. A larger café with a kitchen and brunch service in the Navigli, which will also become the Academy’s new home, and a first shop outside Italy, in the Chiado district of Lisbon, are both announced for October 2026.

Cafezal works with short supply chains, pays fairly and imports directly, under its manifesto for Italian specialty coffee. The coffee is roasted in Milan and sold as beans or ground, in espresso and filter roasts, with single lots under a Prestige collection label beside the Garibaldi blend and the Black Lyon decaf. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.