Cafés in Paraguay Asunción

Tereré, cocido and chipa

Tereré is yerba mate steeped in cold water with plenty of ice, often with yuyos, refreshing or medicinal herbs, added to the water. It is sipped through a bombilla, a metal straw with a filter at one end, from a guampa, a cup made of horn, wood, steel or silver.⁹ Paraguay keeps a Día Nacional del Tereré on the last Saturday of February.⁹

Cocido is the hot counterpart: yerba mate boiled in water, sweetened, and drunk black as cocido negro or with milk as cocido con leche, mostly at breakfast or at the merienda, the afternoon snack.¹⁰ For cocido quemado, yerba and sugar go into a pot under live embers until the sugar melts, then hot water is poured over and the drink is strained.¹⁰

Chipa usually comes with it. In Eusebio Ayala, at kilometer 64 of Ruta PY02, the chipería María Ana charged ₲5,000 for a traditional chipa argolla (ring) and ₲10,000 for one with a cocido, as of 2024.¹¹

Where coffee grows in Paraguay

Coffee does grow here, on a small scale. Altos, in the department of Cordillera, has historically been a coffee-growing area. Alvica, a brand launched in October 2020, buys from small farms around Corpus Christi in Canindeyú.⁷ Guarania, founded in 2018, also grows in Canindeyú; its director concedes the land is low for arabica and credits the soil and natural fermentation for the cup.⁷

Supply stays thin. A writer based in Paraguay noted in 2017 that its coffee farms were few compared with its neighbors'.⁶ In 2025 Guarania's owner said there were too few in the country to support further growth, and that the brand had started its own planting in 2024, aiming at 500 plants every three months.²

From instant jars to specialty roasters

The supermarket shelf still sets the pattern. In the year to May 2022, ground coffee made up 51% of sales and instant 45%, with capsules and soy-based coffee at 2% each.⁵ In 2022 Nestlé Paraguay named café con leche, cappuccino and latte as the drinks Paraguayans ask for most.⁵

Coffee chains came late. Juan Valdez products reached Paraguay at the end of 2014 and its first café opened in 2015, the same year as The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Asu Coffee Fest, first held in Asunción in 2016, drew 1,500 people that year and 3,000 in 2017.⁶ The supplier Cafecap dates the current "nueva ola del café" (new wave of coffee) to 2019; it stalled in the pandemic and picked up again in 2021.¹

Local roasters work with imported green coffee. Kafa Tostadores, one of the country's first specialty roasters, buys microlots from Paraguay, Brazil and El Salvador, while Totem Tostadores in Asunción imports from Ethiopia, Burundi, Kenya, Costa Rica, Honduras and Brazil.⁷ Café Quinto buys from Brazilian producers; the number of cafés using its beans doubled in 2023–2024, and it expected to pass 100 in the first half of 2025.²

Asunción, from Calle Palma to Villa Morra

The capital is where Paraguay's coffee goes. In 2022 Asunción and its metropolitan area accounted for an estimated 59% of national consumption, and the city had the highest consumption per head.⁵ The old center keeps its long-running counters: Lido Bar, opened in 1953 by Enrique and Elizabeth Schulz at the corner of Palma and Chile, moved in 2022 to Independencia Nacional and Paraguayo Independiente. It is known for Paraguayan cooking such as caldo de surubí (river-catfish soup) and for its empanadas.¹³

Calle Palma also has Kaffe'i, opened in November 2024 by Luis Wong, the first Paraguayan Q Grader, a taster certified by the Coffee Quality Institute. It roasts on site and brews V60, Chemex and AeroPress. In October 2025 it became the first café in Paraguay named among the top 100 in South America by The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops, chosen from more than 1,800.¹²

Newer specialty cafés have opened in Villa Morra. Coto Café, which opened in late 2025 at the corner of Andrade and General Bernardo O'Higgins, serves Quinto coffee roasted in Paraguay, made by baristas trained for the café.¹⁴