About us

What do you get when you bring a Colombian and an Indonesian together in Russia? Well, naturally, a coffee shop in Buenos Aires. Hang on! How did that happen? Why Russia? And how did Daniel get so tall?

Back in 2011 when there were no specialty coffee shops in Buenos Aires, LATTEnTE was founded. Daniel and Zehan wanted to do something good and different, something that would make a difference. Let’s be real: for a city with so much Italian heritage, a decade ago the coffee in Buenos Aires was pretty meek! (There’s a brilliant local term for this: umbrella juice). For that same reason, they want to spread the coffee culture right across the city. A year later, they moved the shop from the neighborhood of Recoleta to the current beloved location on Thames in the hip neighborhood of Palermo. 


Zehan and Daniel founded LATTEnTE with a simple proposition: start with a great product, and everything else will follow. Push that umbrella juice to the side and find out what quality coffee in BA really tastes like. Above all, we’re committed to being present on the local coffee scene and bringing you the best cup of coffee around, so pop into LATTEnTE today!.

Nuestros Fundadores

Zehan Connell

Being tiny and speaking only a little bit of Spanish (she speaks fluent today) didn’t stop her from following her dream and starting the first specialty coffee shop ever in Buenos Aires with her friend Daniel. From one of the world’s biggest coffee exporting countries, Indonesia, Zehan knows and loves good coffee. She was 2013’s Exigí Buen Café champion, and was BA’s go-to-girl for all things coffee. Since 2019 she has lived in New York City and runs part of the business from her cozy apartment in Williamsburg. She is looking for opportunities to expand LATTEnTE in the US.

Daniel Cifuentes

Co-owner of LATTEnTE and affectionately known as “Gorilla”, Daniel hails from Colombia and is an award-winning barista, having won the National Barista Competition in 2012 and represented Argentina at the world championships in Melbourne in 2013. Surprisingly, Daniel hates coffee. No, that’s not true. It’s a massive part of his life. He met Zehan in Russia while the two were studying at university. Daniel is currently in charge of guaranteeing the excellence of our coffee, and he is the one who you can contact for commercial relations. Do you want the best coffee in your business? Dani is your guy. 

Our history

LATTEnTE was founded in 2011 and has been committed to coffee excellence ever since. Coffee culture has undergone a huge transformation over the past decade, and LATTEnTE prides itself as the leader of the coffee vanguard. They have achieved this by rigorously training their baristas, and subjecting them to the “Gorilla Test”: evaluation of the coffee by Daniel “Gorilla” Cifuentes’ esteemed palette. In 2011, we were interviewed for the Todo Noticias channel, in 2012 we passed through Cocineros Argentinos de TV Pública, where Dani showed how to make coffee and in 2013 we were part of the barista contest Exigí buen café. Little by little we began to spread the culture of good coffee and immerse ourselves in the coffee community, holding in 2014 the first Latte Art Competition with sponsors such as Exigí buen café, Jameson Irish Whiskey, LAB Tostadores de café, Birkin Coffee Bar y Full City House. Together we raised funds for “La Sartén por el Mango”, an NGO in charge of improving the conditions of the Monte Chingolo community.


Between sunny weekends, pop-ups and coffee; we made a space for ourselves in a country that was reluctant to embrace our ways.

At first the porteños of Buenos Aires were resistant to upgrading their coffee culture. Fortunately, over the years the coffee scene has changed, giving rise to new proposals with a greater awareness of the coffee process “from bean to cup”.

We are coffee roasters

From 2017, we’ve expanded our work as one of Buenos Aires’ best coffee stores to include roasting and distribution services. This means greater quality control for our Palermo, Cañitas and Belgrano stores, and even better coffee for the established and up-and-coming Buenos Aires coffee shops to whom we sell our wholesale roasted coffee beans.