Cafés in Ecuador Quito

From Jipijapa to the instant-coffee era

Ecuador has grown coffee since 1860, and the area around Jipijapa, in the coastal province of Manabí, became one of its main growing districts.¹ Coffee rose as an export almost in step with cacao, and after a dip in 1903 it was replanted; from about 1905 it shipped to several European countries from the port of Manta.¹

Exports grew from 220,000 bags in 1935 to 1,018,000 in 1975 and peaked at 1,810,000 in 1985.¹ Industry followed: SICA started making soluble coffee in 1960 and began exporting it in bulk in 1972.³ Production fell to about 600,000 bags in the early 2010s, from about 1.5 million in the 1990s.³

Where Ecuador's coffee grows

Arabica makes up about 55% of the harvest and grows mainly in Manabí, Loja, Pichincha and Imbabura; robusta, about 45%, comes mostly from Orellana and Sucumbíos in the Amazon.² The Amazon region holds 16,680 of the 30,314 ha planted, more than half, and Orellana alone about 9,000 ha, but Manabí, with 6,825 ha, produced more coffee in 2023 because it gets more from each hectare.²

Yields are low across the country: about 5 quintals (hundredweights) of arabica per hectare against a regional average of 25, and 10 of robusta against 35.² Arabica is picked from March to October, robusta from February to November.¹

Cacao, the older crop

Cacao has deeper roots here than coffee. The earliest evidence of its domestication, from about 3300 BC, comes from southeast Ecuador, where the Mayo-Chinchipe culture first cultivated the tree.⁴ At Palanda, near the Peruvian border, a tomb of that culture held cacao alongside Spondylus shells.⁵ In the early 1600s cacao from the Guayaquil coast flooded the Mexican market and pushed prices down.⁴

During the second half of the 19th century, cacao production nearly tripled and exports grew tenfold, making the coast one of the world's leading producers and Guayaquil the center of banking and trade.⁶ Disease halved cacao exports between 1920 and 1923, and by the early 1950s bananas had replaced cacao as the main export crop.⁶

The crop is back. In the first half of 2025 Ecuador exported 248,000 tonnes of cacao worth US$2.31 billion, 82% more in value than a year earlier, and Anecacao, the cacao exporters' association, ranks it the world's third-largest producer, with more than 180,000 smallholders on 600,000 ha.⁷

Café pasado, bolón and the café boom in Quito

On the coast, coffee is a breakfast drink. Bolón de verde, green plantain mashed and shaped around cheese or chicharrón (fried pork), usually comes with a café pasado (literally "passed" coffee) or fruit juice, and with black coffee it is called the traditional desayuno montubio, the breakfast of the coastal countryside.⁸ Before wheat bread became common, coffee on the coast came with patacones (fried green plantain), pan de yuca (cassava-flour rolls) or bolón.⁸

Cafés have multiplied faster than coffee farms. At the end of 2023 Ecuador had 13,407 cafeterías, 48% more than five years earlier; Sweet & Coffee led the market with US$64.7 million in 2023 sales, and Juan Valdez, the Colombian chain, took about US$22 million.⁹ Starbucks arrived only recently, opening its first Ecuadorian store in Cumbayá, Quito, on 15 August 2024.⁹