Finca La Concepción

Manuel Pereira Melgar is the second generation owner of Finca La Concepcion in Marcala, Honduras. Since our first introduction to Manuel’s coffee was in 2017, we got to pay a visit to him at his farm in 2018 and a year later, Manuel came to visit us in Virginia. This was during the construction of our Broad Street Cafe when studs were still showing and everything was covered in dust.

After working in construction in Georgia for a few years in his 20s, Manuel returned to Marcala to take over his father’s coffee farm and has spent years reworking and innovating ways to make the whole farm productive. The two major themes of Concepcion are biodiversity and sustainability and the result is, both visually and practically, gorgeous. Manuel cultivates groves of fruit trees, vegetable and flower gardens, and keeps bees. He makes his own fertilizer using his own compost which he augments with manure from a neighboring organic cattle farm. In 2015, he switched his coffee production to the honey process to mitigate his water usage with the added benefit of increasing cup quality.

His visit in 2019 feels like ages ago now and our visit to Marcala, another lifetime. Someday we’ll get to sit down with Manuel over a table full of Kuba Kuba or share a cup of his coffee in front of the wall in Broad Street that he helped us hang, but for now, we want you to know his name as well as his beautiful product.