For many Denver coffee fans, the idea of eating fava beans with their morning brew may sound a little strange. But for coffee drinkers who come from Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, they’ve sorely missed having a place to do just that.
With the January opening of Eastside Espresso, at 5091 E. Colfax Ave., there’s now a comfortable spot to enjoy java sourced from several African countries alongside plates like ful — fava beans spiced with berebere, cumin and rosemary, topped with diced tomato, jalapeno and onion, and eaten by hand with loaves of French bread.
You’ll also find chechebsa, a sweet, spicy and savory dish made up of small slices of tortilla-thin teff flatbread served with honey and spiced butter. There are also sambusas, a decidedly vivid avocado salad, and breakfast burritos.
Eastside Espresso is neat and brightly lit, with scattered plants and cozy seating thatap as good for work as it is for luxuriating over a latte. The owner, Azeb Leul, is often there preparing and serving food. The beverage list is full of the expected classics, including Americanos, mochas and drip coffee.
Millete Birhanemaskel, owner of Whittier Cafe, roasts the beans that Leul serves. She, Leul and three other women represent a growing community of Ethiopian-Tigrayan coffee sellers who are bringing one of the oldest coffee cultures on the planet to the Denver area, both with traditional practices and a commitment to exquisite beans.
On top of Whittier and Eastside, Senait Berihun is serving top-tier joe from Berihu’s Coffee, a counter inside the Capitol Market, 13650 E. Colfax Ave. in Aurora. Then there is the mother-daughter team of Freweyni Beyene and Hewan Kassa, who are roasting, bagging and selling coffee straight from Endless Grind, their cafe at 17070 E. Quincy Ave.
All four places like serving beans from across Africa, though only Birhanemaskel sources exclusively from there. Each place does its own rendition of an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, which traditionally includes roasting coffee beans in a pan, followed by hand-grinding and clay-pot brewing and serving. The ceremonies are used as a way to connect and to be social.
“Like Americans have dinner, Ethiopians have coffee. Thatap when you get together and talk through the good times and the bad times,” said Berihun. “It is big. When it comes to our community, coffee is a religion.”
And it’s no accident that the proprietors of these metro Denver coffee shops are women, since the ritualized ceremonies, held three times a day, are usually carried out by women in Ethiopia. But in the United States, there’s another reason why it’s important for there to be “a movement of Black-women-owned-and-operated coffee shops,” said Birhanemaskel.
“For me, coffee comes from East Africa. But here, especially in Colorado, [the industry] is very white and very male. There’s been this huge erasure thatap happened,” she continued. “I didn’t open because I was trying to combat that trend, but I did open to teach people about coffee. I feel like our very existence is political.”
Birhanemaskel continues to source her beans from across Africa, but refuses to purchase from Ethiopia, citing the 200-2002 civil war, continuing unrest and humanitarian crisis in Tigray, the northernmost part of Ethiopia.
All four places hold a ceremony once a week: Berihu’s on Saturday and the others on Sunday. While each proprietor adds their own spin, the proceedings follow a general format. After folks are gathered, the hostess will light incense and hand-roast fresh, green coffee beans, before placing them in the jebena, a tall ceramic vessel. Over the course of one to four hours, she will pour three rounds, awol, kalay and bereka. “You leave wishing them a blessing,” said Kassa, noting the last round’s literal translation.
“This is my dream, so I got my dream”
The Tigrayan coffee community is not new. Whittier opened in 2014, and Endless Grind three years later.
“When we opened, we were the only roasters in Aurora,” said Kassa, who cut her teeth at Whittier when Beyene, an old friend of Birhanemaskel, was first opening her shop. Berihu’s is newish, having opened in March 2025.
Eastside Espresso is also new, though its history runs deep. It occupies the same space as the former Africana Cafe, an institution Leul and her partner Titi Reda opened 23 years ago. “It was the spot. When it closed, we didn’t have anywhere to go,” said Birhanemaskel. But many former customers have returned to give Eastside Espresso some life.
While there are plenty of places to grab a quick cup, Whittier, Eastside Espresso and Endless Grind have all made a point of becoming community hubs. “I wouldn’t say that we serve the Tigrayan community so much as the Aurora community,” said Kassa, a sentiment echoed by each one of the other owners. “It looks so small wall to wall. There’s nothing special about it physically, but there’s so much that happens here and so much love,” she continued.
For all five women, the dedication to world-class coffee runs deep. Retaining a coffee shop is often as much about living out a lifelong dream as it is about representing the culture. Berihun immigrated to Colorado from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2009. She and her husband have operated a 7-Eleven franchise near Washington Park since 2007. She grew up around coffee; her father and four other partners ran a coffee processing company. “This is a love letter to my dad,” she said.
Beyene came to Denver from the city of Mekele around roughly the same time. She says she’s dreamed of opening a coffee shop since childhood, but life, as it often does, got in the way. Before opening Endless Grind, Beyene did ten years in cosmetology and still owns a beauty shop. “This is my dream, so I got my dream,” she said. Kassa, who came up with the name, says it’s a nod to the continuous hustle her mom had to display to get where she is now.
Endless Grind serves only fair trade and organic beans that are sourced quarterly from places like Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Sumatra, as well as Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. Beyene roasts onsite two to three times a week and says bagged coffee is roughly 20 percent of the business.
Berihun hopes to one day buy a coffee plantation back in Ethiopia. Birhanemaskel says she would like to eventually open a co-roastery for Black women coffee owners. “That would be a party,” she grinned.
