Casa Libre Puts Mexican Coffee at the Center of a Costa Mesa Grocery

Mexican coffee has spent years on the margins of the U.S. specialty conversation, and Casa Libre is betting that a grocery aisle is the right place to change that. The cafe and roastery opened Sept. 24 inside Mercado González, the 70,000-square-foot food hall and supermarket in Costa Mesa, California, owned by the González family behind the Northgate Market chain.

The footprint is small: 500 square feet, with 200 of them given over to the roastery. That's a tight build, and it's deliberate. The founders say three more Casa Libre coffee shops are coming to Southern California soon, so this room is meant to be a template as much as a shop.

A roaster on display

Casa Libre's Director of Coffee and Head Roaster Steve Cuevas, a decorated coffee professional, runs a Loring S15 Falcon and roasts exclusively Mexican-grown green coffees. Guests can watch the process from the floor. Sourcing runs through Covoya, and the cafe launched with two coffees from Chiapas and one from Veracruz.

Steve Cuevas. Photo by CARVINGBLOCK Studios, courtesy of Casa Libre.

"Casa Libre looks for quality and consistency, but also coffees that demonstrate the diversity of Mexico's growing regions rather than conforming to a single flavor profile," Cuevas said. "The team prioritizes distinctive coffees from producers they can identify and stand behind."

That sourcing philosophy shows up in the lineup. One of the launch coffees comes from Doña Duglas Molina and her family at El Cielo in Villa Corzo, Chiapas. It arrives through Covoya's Café Delas program, which supports coffee businesses led by women. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of traceability buyers who follow origin closely will look for.

Built around a roastery in plain sight

The roasting operation sits inside a square structure framed by hacienda-style arches. Metal shelving holds retail bags of fresh coffee, and burgundy tile fronts the bar. Gold-accent lighting and pendant spotlights bring warmth to a room that could easily have felt like a checkout lane.

Photo by CARVINGBLOCK Studios, courtesy of Casa Libre.

"Our vision was to create a space that felt both elevated and welcoming… a space that feels inviting and familiar, yet intentionally designed to showcase the quality, culture and experience behind specialty Mexican coffee within a mercado," said Casa Libre co-founder Natalie Taormina.

Two founders, one grocery family

Taormina and co-founder Jeremy Creighton worked with members of the González family to build the brand, drawing on their own backgrounds in specialty coffee and branding. Creighton is from Melbourne, Australia, and Taormina grew up in Orange County. Together they co-founded Long Beach's Common Room Roasters, and they ran the U.S. office of Melbourne-based branding agency Passport Brand Design. Their later venture, Freelance Coffee Project, is a single-origin roastery cafe attached to that agency in Newport Beach.

Casa Libre is the first project that puts the couple's coffee and branding work into a grocery setting, and the partnership shows in the concept. The team built the brand around the motto "mi casa es tu casa," with onsite roasting and Mexican-grown coffee at the core.

Photo by CARVINGBLOCK Studios, courtesy of Casa Libre.

The bar and the menu

A three-group La Marzocco Linea PB espresso machine anchors the bar, alongside Mahlkönig E80 and EK43 grinders. That's serious equipment for a room this size, and it signals that the cafe isn't treating the grocery location as a secondary channel.

The drinks lean into Mexican flavors. The El Jaguar latte combines corn, cacao and chile syrup, and the El Colibrí pairs espresso with café de olla syrup. Both feel like a natural extension of the menu's regional focus rather than novelty for its own sake.

Photo by CARVINGBLOCK Studios, courtesy of Casa Libre.

The roastery already supplies the cafe and the Casa Libre online shop. The next step is whole-bean sales in Mercado González's grocery aisles, and the team plans to add canned cold coffee as well.

Where it goes from here

"Casa Libre was created by bringing together the González family's experience in grocery and hospitality with our experience in coffee and brand building," Taormina said. "Casa Libre grew from that relationship and a shared belief that the quality, diversity and regionality of Mexican coffee deserved greater attention within the U.S. specialty coffee conversation."

The rollout timeline is concrete. Another cafe is planned for Stanton this fall, followed by locations in Bellflower and Inglewood in 2027. My read is that the real test isn't the first shop. It's whether a model built on a grocery anchor, a visible roastery and a single-country sourcing focus keeps its character once it leaves the mercado.

Photo by CARVINGBLOCK Studios, courtesy of Casa Libre.

Casa Libre is located inside Mercado González at 2300 Harbor Blvd. in Costa Mesa.