Our Story

 

When I was finishing my bachelor's degree in Manila, where I was born and raised, I used to spend evenings at my favourite neighbourhood café to study or work on my university requirements.

 

I carried this practice over to when I started my career, in which I occasionally needed to meet colleagues over the weekend or work late nights during Business Review season. For some reason, the smell of coffee and the cafè ambiance always made me focus on whatever I set out to do.

When I moved to Berlin in 2018, one of the things I automatically fell in love with was the strong coffee culture. I loved working on my master thesis at my new neighbourhood café and planning personal projects there. I looked forward to every break at work (or meetings in cafés - yes we could!) so that I could run to the nearby café. I looked forward to trips to other European cities, so I could taste their coffee, because it was always so diverse in terms of origin and taste.

I've had coffee from South America, Africa, and Asia. But there was something missing - Philippine coffee was extremely rare, almost impossible to find, in Europe. 

So on my last trip home, in the middle of the pandemic, I made sure to find potential partners and bring back samples for friends and colleagues to taste.

Really, the Philippines grows its own coffee? I thought you only had islands!

That's exactly how the conversation went. It was during this meet-up that my friends heard of and tasted Philippine coffee for the first time. This paved the way for a longer conversation on the Philippine coffee culture and our landscapes that made it possible.

 

For my friends, it was the moment their world grew just a bit bigger through a cup of coffee. For me though, it was the validation I needed to start Kape de Filipina. Not just so more people could taste our coffee, but so that more people could truly, deeply discover what else the Philippines has to offer. And in doing so, we pay homage to the Philippines' very diverse culture as well. This is why our coffee designs are the way they are. The designs are inspired by the tribal print of our partner communities' clothing. Through coffee, we celebrate not just the fruit of their labour, but their cultural identity as well.