NAPOLEÁN CONTRERAS
FOUNDER, ROASTER & Q GRADER
I had my first cup of coffee at eight years old, from my grandmother’s hand. I didn’t know it then, but that cup had a family history behind it — my grandparents’ own relationship with coffee in Santander, Colombia, a story I only pieced together much later.
My family moved to Venezuela before I was born, and that’s where coffee found me again — this time as a craft, not just a memory. I discovered specialty coffee there under Pietro Carbone, a coffee master who trained me in what “specialty” actually means beyond the word on a bag.
By trade, I’m a digital marketing professional — I specialized in SEO, and I still use that background to run Tostar Café. But somewhere between client meetings, I kept finding a reason to hand someone a different coffee and explain why it tasted the way it did.
Eventually that stopped being a side habit and became the actual work. I’m a certified Q Grader through the Coffee Quality Institute — the credential the industry actually uses to license buyers and quality control professionals — plus the full Coffee Skills Program track through the Specialty Coffee Association. That’s not here to impress you. It’s the honest answer to a fair question: why trust the person deciding what “specialty grade” means on this site.
Credentials
- Introduction to Coffee
- Sensory Skills Foundation
- Sensory Skills Intermediate
- Barista Foundation
- Brewing Foundation
- Brewing Intermediate
- Roasting Foundation
- Roasting Intermediate
- Coffee Fermentation
- Q Grader Arabica — Coffee Quality Institute
Where This Was Learned
- Sales, El Prístino Café, Bogotá, Colombia — Jan—Jun 2019
- Barista & Roaster, KAFO Café, Bogotá, Colombia — May 2017—Dec 2018
- Sales, Café Mesa de Los Santos, Bogotá, Colombia — 2015—2017
Education
B.A. in Business Administration, Universidad de Santander, Colombia (2008)
Advertising Certificate, IUNP, Caracas, Venezuela (2000)
The Full Training Record, Year by Year
Marketing & Digital
- Advanced SEO Master’s, Webpositer Academy
- E-Commerce, Platzi
- SEO: Search Engine Positioning, Platzi
Coffee Training
- Coffee Fermentation, Tecnicafé (2020)
- Sensory Skills Foundation, SCA — Ricardo Villegas (2019)
- Pre Q Grader Arabica, Cafenorte, Cartago Valle, Colombia (2018)
- Roasting Intermediate, SCA — Pietro Carbone (2018)
- Roasting Foundation, SCA — Pietro Carbone (2018)
- Brewing Foundation, SCA — Pietro Carbone (2018)
- Brewing Intermediate, SCA — Pietro Carbone (2018)
- Barista Skills Foundation, SCA — Pietro Carbone (2015)
- Introduction to Coffee, SCA — Ricardo Villegas (2015)
- Basic Barista Training, SENA, Bogotá, Colombia (2015)
Volunteer Work
- Prepared the Asia cupping tables, Specialty Coffee Expo — Seattle, WA (2017)
- Prepared the Africa cupping tables, Specialty Coffee Expo — Seattle, WA (2017)
Two Different Coffee Stories, Both Real
My family’s own connection to coffee is in Santander — that’s where my grandparents’ story comes from, and where Café Mesa de Los Santos, the company I once sold for, is based. Tostar Café’s Direct Trade relationship is a separate, real thing: a small family farm in Norte de Santander, a different department, sourced and negotiated for this business specifically. I’m not going to blur those two into one convenient story just because the names sound alike. One is where I come from. The other is who we buy from. Both are true, and they’re not the same thing.
What connects them is simple: I don’t sell a coffee I can’t personally evaluate, and I don’t grade a lot I haven’t been trained to grade honestly. That’s the whole qualification. Everything else on this site is built on top of it.