Urbania Café Calle 8

Urbania is a Medellín specialty coffee company with a social mission, and its café on Calle 8, near Parque El Poblado, is the best place to try it. The company describes itself as a socially and environmentally responsible Colombian business, trades as Urbania Café S.A.S. BIC, and publishes an annual BIC impact report. Its slogan sums up the idea: a good coffee is a coffee that is good to others.

What sets it apart is where the coffee comes from. Urbania calls its model conscious coffee: it buys high-quality beans from vulnerable communities, including growers who are victims of the armed conflict and communities moving away from illicit crops to coffee, and it says it pays them well above market prices. It also supports growers who use agroecological and organic methods, shade-grown coffee and processing that minimises water use, and links its coffee to conservation projects for jaguars, pumas and Andean bears. The company aligns this work with three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, on reducing inequality, protecting biodiversity and responsible consumption.

Urbania opened its first café in El Poblado in 2015, a pocket-sized, industrial-chic space with a mellow atmosphere, and the cold brew has long been a favourite order, alongside muffins, pastries and other baked goods. Ask the baristas which coffee is currently on offer.

Opening hours suit a morning or lunchtime visit: Monday to Friday from 7:00 to 18:00, and Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 8:30 to 15:30. The company has grown to more than a dozen cafés around the metropolitan area, including outlets in the Oviedo, Los Molinos and Viva Envigado shopping centres, a café inside a bookshop at Viva Palmas and one inside the Museo de Antioquia, which is handy for a break between galleries.

Urbania also sells coffee online, with delivery within Medellín and across Colombia, and offers subscriptions, so it is easy to keep drinking it after you leave. The café suits coffee lovers, remote workers who need a quick stop and anyone who wants their coffee spending to support growers. It is a short walk from Café Zorba and the restaurants around Parque El Poblado, and from Hija Mía in Manila. For questions, contact the company on WhatsApp at +57 314 769 3978.