Café Integral was founded in 2012 to bring exceptional Nicaraguan coffees to the forefront of American coffee culture. It works with complete vertical integration, an approach that starts from the grower’s perspective and follows the coffee “from shrub husbandry to the perfect brew”, sourcing from four of Nicaragua’s growing regions through close, familial relationships with producers.

The work begins long before the harvest, with soil analysis, mill maintenance, plant renovation and nursery growth alongside the producers. Once picking starts, the team spends more than three months on the ground, refining milling methods with the early pickings and managing day lots and protocols for each plot, then tastes, analyses and scores every lot once it has dried, grouping similar pickings and sending the producers full reports on the harvest. The rarest pickings become single estate offerings, and the top grades are blended into regional single origins and blends. Each coffee is roasted in small batches at the company’s Brooklyn facility. The 2025 harvest has landed, with new lots that include a first coffee from a Colombian producer alongside the Nicaraguan farms Café Integral has bought from since 2013.

The café is in Nolita. The flagship espresso blend, Dulcinea, is “a varying edition-based offering” that shifts with the seasons and fresh-crop arrivals, built on a washed Dipilto base with natural and honey process coffees for dimension, and the shop also sells a cold brew blend roasted for cool-water extraction, a rotating Swiss Water decaf and organic chocolate-covered coffee beans.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Café Integral