We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mateo Toro. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mateo below.

Mateo, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?

Our business was born around the premise that a good cup of coffee is the one you like the most. The third wave coffee world is an amazing one, but many inside this industry tend to think that in order to call it a “good” cup of coffee it needs to be made a certain way and nothing should be added to it or removed to it to keep this title. We do things differently.

For the longest time people in the industry would say that dark roasts are terrible or robusta coffee is bad no matter what, and now we are starting to see these beautiful darker roasts or robusta options that are absolutely incredible, from leading farmers and roasters all over the world. So we should never forget to stay flexible and keep our eyes peeled.

For this reason, we took the time to find what we believe are the best out of the sugar options, the best out of the milks, the best out of the classic and modern recipes and decided to build a place where you could have access to them freely. We will not judge the way people want to drink their coffee, only the way we make it. We make coffee we love, and you make it your own by adding whatever you want to it.

We do not over complicate things for our customers having 3 different espresso options, or having an extensive pour-over menu, we want to make things simple for those who are not experts in coffee but still want to get a clean, vibrant and enjoyable coffee experience.

That is the reason why we decided to use “Specialty Street Coffee” on our logos, because it gives us more flexibility when it comes to crafting our recipes and adding exciting items to the menu. We were also greatly inspired by the street coffee culture in our home country, Colombia, so the name also pays a homage to the coffee we grew up with.

Having absolute coffee experts that own shops and want to provide very exclusive products is always necessary and, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE those things, but this all comes down to having more options that help people transition into the world of specialty coffee or get a better understanding of why it exists and what it brings to the table.

So yeah, many inside this industry might not agree, but the world of coffee is a wide spectrum and every single coffee shop has something different to offer that adds to this beautiful world, and they all should be embraced.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our coffee company is called Distrito Coffee and it is based out of San Pedro, California. It was founded by a group of friends that had a common interest in coffee, but not after going through some really tough times.

My wife Paula and I owned a hardwood importer and construction company that would specialize in building decks, fences, pergolas and more out of exotic hardwoods we imported ourselves from Colombia, our home county, and Brazil. We were growing with said company and were really happy with the amount of projects we were working in, until COVID hit.

As most of you know, COVID raised wood prices through the roof and limited the amount of containers that were available to transport our woods, so a container that previously took 7 weeks to import was now taking 2-3 months and it was impossible to stay afloat after a few months of operating under COVID restrictions.

Unfortunately we had to close down the company on its 2nd year of operation and start looking for new opportunities. We had discussed the idea of opening a coffee shop with our friends Gene and Kari, because we all loved coffee and wanted to own a place where we could spend some time with people and serve the community.

That is when we took the leap and starting working on the initial concept of Distrito. At that time we were far from coffee experts and decided that we wanted to build a place where people could access specialty coffee without feeling out of place, as many of our previous experiences in specialty coffee shops had left us with that same feeling, like we didn’t belong.

So 2 years later, and knowing a whole lot more about coffee! we opened the doors of our first shop in San Pedro where we now get to serve hundreds of customers every day, and share a bit of our ‘Colombianity’ with them in every visit. We are stoked to have the privilege to open the first specialty coffee shop in San Pedro, CA and we hope we can grow with this community and get to see it thrive like it deserves.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Starting a business is one of the most amazing experiences ever, but it doesn’t come easily. When you are trying to do what you love and share it with other people, there are natural problems that are going to come your way when you least expect it.

For example, when we decided to build our coffee shop, we leased what used to be an old art gallery in Downtown San Pedro. Little did we know that we had to perform a change of use for us to be able to use the space as a “restaurant” and the process brought with it a little bit of hell.

We had to deal with multiple city departments and offices, attend dozens of reviews of the plans, and even deal with all the licensing and permits ourselves. We had to study a lot, we had to learn a bunch of things we didn’t even want to learn to begin with, but that is what it took to be able to open so we had to do it.

We had to take time away from learning our craft (coffee) to learn about city rules, sanitation department requirements, health department processes, FDA food code, commerce rules, and a whole lot about plumbing and construction!

So this is all to say that, as business owners, we need to be willing to learn things outside of our craft in order to achieve our goals. It is a little frustrating of course, but we always need to keep an eye on the big picture and do that needs to be done.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

We started with a very limited budget and no savings as we spent everything we had building the place. There has been a few moments when we didn’t really know how we were going to survive, or how we were going to make rent as we did not have the cash flow or profit to be able to cover our main expenses.

There was a moment when we had to reach out to our families for them to help us with a few payments that we were not able to make, and without that help we probably would have never opened our doors.

As a business owner, if you need a little extra help, always feel free to reach out to family or friends that believe in you and in your business. They will always help if they possibly can, and they will be happy to do so! Just make sure to always keep working hard for yourself and for them.

Learn how to move your cash around, which payments are a priority every month, and organize everything in a way that is easy to understand and follow. There will always be tough weeks or months, as in every business, but again, as long as you keep a good eye on the big picture you will be just fine!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.distritocoffee.com
• Instagram: @distritocoffee