Courtesy | Juan Vargas
Tucked away in a small valley in the Northern hills of Columbia lies fields teeming with coffee beans and sugar cane plants. This is the home of Café Coronel, a coffee company named after Colonel Ariel Vargas, better known in Hillsdale as senior Juan Vargas Hernández’s father.
Seven years ago, the Vargas family traded the bustling streets and the high-rise buildings of Bogotá for his mother’s hometown: the quiet village of Socorro.
“My dad was preparing for retirement from the army,” Vargas Hernández said. “We’ve always been attached to my mom’s hometown because most of our extended family lives there. It’s a very small, Spanish village, and we were tired of the city.”
His parents purchased a 135-acre farm and debated how to use the property. Eventually, they agreed it would be best to grow sugarcane, following in their ancestors’ footsteps.
“I grew up running through my family’s sugarcane fields,” Vargas Hernández said. “I would grab a machete and cut the sugarcane in half so I could drink the juice that came out of it.”
Vargas Hernández said his family grew to appreciate the property while exploring the land on a morning walk.
“One morning, we woke up at 5 am and just walked around,” Vargas Hernández said. “We fell in love with it because it’s quite hilly, and at the very top of the property you can oversee two different towns and you can see the churches–big, old Spanish churches.”
The family started off growing sugarcane, but Ariel Vargas eventually realized their farm had the perfect soil and climate for a more lucrative crop: coffee. They planted their first seeds in 2016 and reaped their first harvest in 2019.
“Coffee takes forever to grow,” Vargas Hernández said. “It takes one year to produce these useless seeds. You’re only going to get useful seeds three to five years after you plant.”
The first year was a learning process as they discovered how to collect, dry, and separate the pulp from the coffee beans. They accomplished the first harvest with the help of their workers, yet still faced significant setbacks along the way.
“We left 500 pounds of coffee drying out in the sun, which was a quarter of our production for that year. After they were dried, we put them in coffee bags, but they were stolen overnight,” Vargas Hernández said. “It was a big deal for us because it was the first time we were harvesting, and it started out like that.”
Vargas Hernández said the harvests have only gotten better year after year. Their family began by selling the coffee beans to a local buyer who would purchase all of the seeds. But last year, the family began roasting their own coffee, packaging it, and eventually created the brand Café Coronel.
“It is the authentic flavor of Colombian coffee,” Andrea Hernández, Juan’s mother, said.
The Vargas family is hoping to expand their business into the United States.
“I’m the one that has to open the store,” Vargas Hernández said. “That’s one of my goals after graduation: to be able to distribute my family’s coffee and help small coffee producers in the region.”
Although it wasn’t always his plan, Juan hopes to assist his family in any way possible once he graduates. His brother Thomas has the same commitment to the family business, despite it not being his main focus.
Thomas is currently in law school and said he plans to continue his education by earning an economics degree once he is done. He said he wants to specialize in criminal litigation but will always be available for his family when needed.
“Living in Columbia is basically living with our family business,” Thomas said. “Doing all of the things I want to do does not mean that I will not continue to help my family business. It is something that will always be a priority for me.”
Socorro boasts many local coffee producers. However, not all have the same access to land or production facilities as Café Coronel. The Vargas family hopes to impact the bureaucratic process of exporting coffee in order to make it easy and accessible for other Colombian farmers.
“You need a lot of permissions to import and export; it’s very difficult.” Vargas Hernández said. “A lot of people end up losing money because they are forced to sell it for the cheapest price instead of dealing directly with someone overseas.”
Working in such a small town, the Vargas family said they want to uplift their neighbors and friends who need an extra hand. Vargas Hernández said the farmers do not see each other as competition because they understand they must work together to sell their coffee; if not, they’ll all go bankrupt.
This same principle applies to Juan’s relationship with local coffee roasters in Hillsdale. Many people have offered their support and assistance in getting Vargas Hernández involved in the coffee business, most of all Patrick Whalen, owner of Ad Astra Coffee.
“I actually brought some coffee beans from my farm in Columbia that Patrick roasted in Ad Astra,” Vargas Hernández said. “We’re trying to figure out the business details, but my goal is that the first shipment of our coffee into the United States will be sold through Ad Astra so that they can distribute it or serve it in Bon Appetit.”
Juan believes God gave his family this opportunity for a reason and he is committed to seeing this process through.
“I think this is an opportunity that came out of nowhere,” Vargas Hernández said. “If God put it in my life, it’s for a reason.”