Cafés in Chile Santiago

Tea first, and coffee from a jar

Tea is still the everyday infusion: 90% of Chilean households say they drink it regularly, Chile leads Latin America in tea consumption, and it ranks among the world's top five per head.⁴ Coffee is mostly a home drink too: 89% of coffee drinkers have it at home, against 38% at work.⁶ Freeze-dried instant and whole beans each reached 28% of drinkers in a 2025 Corpa survey, and capsules 16% in upper-income homes against 6% in lower-income ones.⁶

Among origins, Colombia is the favorite, named by 68%, ahead of Brazil and Italy.⁶ Sugar depends on age: among young adults, 64% sweeten their coffee, against 37% of Chileans over 46.⁵

The once and the downtown counter

Tea and coffee meet at the once, the early-evening meal of bread, something sweet and a hot drink, usually eaten between 17:00 and 19:00. The best-known theory says once (eleven) was code for aguardiente, an eleven-letter word; another credits English settlers in Valparaíso with bringing the afternoon tea habit, and what goes on the table changes with region, income and age.⁷

Central Santiago also kept the café con piernas, a stand-up coffee bar staffed by waitresses in short dresses, a format that dates from 1982. In the 2000s successive mayors of the comuna (municipality) of Santiago restricted these businesses, and the few that remain now open only in the daytime.⁸

Starbucks, roasters and the specialty boom

The chains came first. Starbucks opened its first Chilean store on 22 August 2003, on Avenida Isidora Goyenechea in Santiago, through a joint venture with the local food-service company Grain Red.⁹ In 2026 the general manager of Juan Valdez Chile put the growth of whole-bean and gourmet coffee at about 10% a year.¹⁰

Filter coffee has found an audience. Carlos Medina, head barista at Elephant Coffee, became Chile's barista champion in 2020; by then his café had gone from one or two filter coffees a day to as many as 15.² Cafés have adjusted to their customers in other ways: in an Expocafé survey, 61% of coffee shops used lactose-free milk and 42% offered plant-based milk.²

The best-known bars are not all in the capital. Three Chilean cafés made The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops for 2026, all in the south: Holaste! in Puerto Natales at 21st, Eco Mapu Coffee in Villarrica at 59th and Wake Up Coffee Lab in Punta Arenas at 74th.¹¹

Santiago

The capital still holds most of the country's specialty trade: in 2021 Perfect Daily Grind put over 50% of the country's specialty cafés in Santiago, and 62% in just three of Chile's regions.² Roasters keep bars in Providencia, Lastarria and Barrio Italia, pastelerías (pastry shops) serve the once around Plaza Ñuñoa, and the stand-up counters remain on the pedestrian streets of Santiago Centro.