Bluebell Coffee Co belongs to two sisters, Yolanda and Marian Valero, who decided on a trip to the United States that coffee would be their way of living by their convictions. They opened their first café in Valencia in 2014, began roasting soon afterwards and opened in California in 2023.

The coffee is roasted by women, and the sourcing follows the women who grow, pick, sort, process and dry it, with a preference for projects that pay fair wages and look after the land. Blend Mujeres, the espresso, was created to give women producers visibility; the current edition gathers the harvests of several growers in El Dorado, Boyacá, a Colombian region where coffee farming is still young. MBilima comes from a cooperative of 130 women in Gakenke, Rwanda. No two coffees are roasted the same way: each gets its own profile.

Bluebell Russafa is the home of the roastery’s coffee. The bar pours espresso drinks, batch brew and, in the warm months, cold brew, alongside seasonal lattes, matcha, hojicha and genmaicha, and two beers from the Valencia brewery Zeta, one of them Blackbell, a Baltic coffee porter made with Bluebell. The kitchen serves brunch: chia pudding, baked apple pancakes with sesame praline, granola with pears poached in red wine, toasts from grated tomato to salmon and avocado, eggs Benedict and a pulled pork brioche. Bluebell also teaches courses on the coffee-growing regions and on how coffee is grown, harvested and processed, with tastings of its own coffees.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Bluebell Coffee Co