Maybe you’ve only heard of them from Instagram, but sometimes El Union gets dressed up to do official coffee business with the Department of Agriculture and Department of Tourism
El Union Coffee has been serving specialty coffee in La Union since 2013, before it was the tourist draw that it is today. Back then, husband-and-wife owners Kiddo and Amy Cosio were operating from a tiny shop that used to be a rice stall. Nowadays, they’re the main attraction at The Great Northwest Travel Stop, a lifestyle collective of foodie establishments that droves of yuppie and millennial weekend travellers make their way to the surftown for. For a taste – quite literally – of the beachside experience that El Union Coffee has created, the pre-dominant Manila folk and seasonal surf nomad can have a cup of Nitro Cold Brew on draft, or a signature Dirty Horchata, their recipe of the rice-milk based drink with a shot of espresso.
In that shot of espresso, though, El Union has kept the heart of third wave coffee. “From [coffee] tree to cup,” says Amy, “How do we honor the people who do this?” El Union has been sourcing local quality beans from farmers in the Cordilleras, Benguet, Mt. Apo, Cagayan De Oro, and Bukidnon. They roast the beans in their own roaster and lab, putting them in blends with the best of Panama, Brazil, and Ethiopia. “El Union is all about coffee in the service of humans. We try to tell this story in every way we can,” says Kiddo, “From the joyful and balanced work culture at our home café, to our customer service goals, to how we buy the highest quality Filipino coffees at the true cost of production (read: expensive), directly from our valued producers, without middlemen.”
