First, there was an idea
Before the café, the menu and the name now shared by so many people, Baristas Club was an intuition: to create a place around coffee that could hold something more. We wanted a coffee shop with a personality, but also a space where music, food, design and conversation formed part of the same experience.
The idea did not arrive fully resolved. It took shape as we discussed it, drew it and placed it against practical questions. What kind of coffee did we want to serve? How should the space feel? What relationship did we want to build with Bilbao? Above all, what kind of project did we want to sustain after the excitement of opening had passed?
Turning the idea into a project
Development began when intention had to become decisions. Budgets, suppliers, layout, visual identity, equipment, products and timings began to depend on one another. Every choice affected the rest and forced us to distinguish the essential from the optional.
Then came the building work, when an idea leaves a document and meets walls, installations, delays and real limits. It taught one of Baristas' first lessons: a project does not move forward because everything follows the plan, but because it learns how to respond without losing its direction.
Opening was the beginning
Opening made the project visible, but it did not complete it. The first weeks showed us what worked when the room filled up, how the menu responded, where work accumulated and what customers and the team actually needed. Many certainties had to adjust when they met everyday life.
We learned that hospitality is built through very concrete gestures: a welcome, a simple explanation, a consistent drink, a cared-for room or the ability to resolve a mistake honestly. The concept might inspire a first visit; the experience was what could turn it into a relationship.
Teaching the team and building a system
For Baristas to last beyond its initial energy, knowledge had to stop depending on one person. Training the team in coffee, products, service and judgement mattered as much as teaching a recipe. Knowing what to do was not enough; everyone needed to understand why we did it that way.
That led to procedures, recipe sheets, checks, routines and forms of internal communication. A system should not turn people into interchangeable parts. A good one does the opposite: it reduces uncertainty, creates common ground and leaves more room to notice, decide and care. We continue to revise it because real work always reveals something the page does not yet know.
Stability before speed
Economic stability did not appear overnight. It grew from understanding costs, adjusting purchasing, organising processes, listening to the response to the menu and finding a pace both the business and its people could sustain. Growing without that foundation would simply have made every problem larger too.
Stability is not a place where difficulties disappear. It is the breathing room to think better, invest with greater purpose and make decisions less governed by urgency. That foundation allowed growth to be organic: moving when the project was ready, not merely when an opportunity appeared.
A brand that began to speak beyond the café
As the work inside became more solid, Baristas developed a voice of its own. Social media stopped being only a display window for dishes and coffee and became an extension of the Club: a place to share coffee education, music, conversations, processes and the cultural references that inspire us.
The brand grew in the same way. Not as a layer placed on top of the business, but as a common language connecting the space, images, T-shirts, website, writing and service. Each action could be different, but it had to feel like part of the same conversation.
The app and a connected Club
The app emerged as the next step in that relationship. It brings together each member's personal space, benefits, points, news, activities, products and music. Its purpose is not to replace meeting in the café, but to keep everything around it connected.
Technology matters when it brings people closer. The app is therefore not separate from the coffee shop or social media; it is part of the same system. What somebody learns in a short post, discovers on the website, experiences at a table or finds in the app should help them understand Baristas Club more fully.
Growth means creating community
Community is not built by gathering followers. It appears when people find reasons to return, participate and feel recognised. It lives in the person who asks about a coffee after reading a post, shares a song, attends an activity, uses the app or turns a table at the Club into part of their routine.
Looking back, the growth of Baristas is neither a straight line nor a collection of launches. It is a sequence of layers supporting one another: idea, project, building work, opening, team, education, systems, stability, brand, social media, app and community. What matters is not reaching a final form, but learning to evolve without losing the thread that connects it all: coffee, people and culture.