Coffee, Decoded #03
May 27, 2026
"I Didn't Know Coffee Could Taste Like This." — A Saturday Behind the Bar
I don't get behind the counter much anymore.
I'm usually on the farm side. The roasting side. The "let's-build-this-thing" side.
But Saturday morning I jumped on bar for about an hour.
And in that hour, the whole reason we built Leiva's walked through the door.
He was a first-timer.
You can always tell.
The eyes scan the menu like it's written in another language. The shoulders go up a little. The voice gets quieter when they order.
So I did what I always do with first-timers.
I introduced myself.
I told him about Leiva's. Not the elevator pitch. The real thing.
I told him we weren't just a coffee shop.
We were the farmers. My family grew the coffee in our backyard in Guatemala.
We were the roasters. We roast it ourselves, in small batches, here in the States.
We were the baristas. The same family that planted the seed is the family pulling your shot.
Zero degrees of separation.
He nodded. Took it in. Then he said the line I've heard a thousand times.
"I usually just drink Folgers. Gas-station black. Nothing fancy."
Here's the thing about that line.
Most coffee shops hear it and write the guy off.
"Okay, dark roast, black, here you go, have a nice day."
I get it. It's easier. But it's also the moment a person decides whether coffee is going to be a thing in their life or not.
So I asked him a different question.
"Would you let me make you one of my favorite drinks? It's called a cortado."
He paused. Then he said yes.
Then he said his wife was in the car and she'd want something too. Something hot. Something sweet. But — and this is what got me — "not too sweet."
That's a person who's been burned by coffee shop drinks before. Drinks that come in tasting like a candy bar melted into milk.
So I made her our El Fuerte.
It's our version of a caramel macchiato. Same idea. Real espresso, steamed milk, a touch of caramel. But without the syrup tanks. Without the sugar bomb. Without the artificial flavors that coat your tongue and hide the actual coffee.
Just espresso. Just milk. Just a little real caramel.
That's it.
He took the first sip of the cortado.
I was watching. I always watch.
His eyes did the thing.
You know the thing.
The little pause where the brain catches up to the tongue. Where someone realizes the thing they thought they knew was actually something completely different.
He looked up at me and said:
"I didn't know coffee could taste like this. So smooth. So sweet. No weird flavors. Just… the milk and the espresso. That's amazing."
I smiled.
Because that sentence? That's the whole reason we exist.
Here's what most people don't realize.
The reason gas-station coffee tastes like gas-station coffee isn't because all coffee is bad.
It's because most coffee in America is built to survive shipping, sitting on a shelf for a year, and getting brewed by a machine that was last cleaned during the Obama administration.
It was never built to taste good.
And the reason fancy coffee drinks taste like dessert isn't because espresso needs to taste like dessert.
It's because most shops use bitter, low-quality espresso, so they have to bury it under syrups and sauces and whipped cream just to make it drinkable.
Real coffee — coffee grown at altitude, picked ripe, roasted small-batch, pulled fresh — doesn't need to be hidden.
It tastes sweet on its own.
It tastes smooth on its own.
The milk doesn't cover it up. The milk makes it better.
That's what that guy tasted on Saturday.
For the first time in his life.
So here's my ask.
If you've been drinking the same coffee your whole life and you're not even sure if you like coffee or you just drink coffee — I want to make you a cortado too.
Or an El Fuerte. Or whatever fits you.
If you're ever in Little Rock on a Saturday, come find me. I might be on bar.
— Geovanni Leiva
Con orgullo, La Familia Leiva
P.S. Don't settle for burnt Coffee
