Vereda Central is a young coffee chain with five locations across the GTA. Juan Sarmiento, who is the co-owner, was born in Bogota, Colombia, where the whole idea and company was created almost 15 years ago.
Sarmiento’s best friend Santiago, produced the idea of starting a specialty coffee company to sell online. It was just the two of them working from the kitchen in Santiago’s condominium, roasting extremely small batches of coffee beans that they found with connections from coffee plantations all across Colombia.
They produced the name Vereda Central because back home they were going back and forth from Bogota and Vereda getting the best coffee beans.
In colombia, Vereda means path. For many years, the footpath in the mountains that took you from one town to the other, had names. Between one town and another, there were farms that didn’t belong to any towns. The farmers decided that this narrow path that had no name, that they were going to name it Vereda, and since Bogota is the capital of the country, its where everything happens and it was located in the middle.
They produced the name Vereda Central because back home they were going back and forth from Bogota and Vereda getting the best coffee beans.
Under the name Vereda Central, they started to market the coffee to sell online, but at that time, e-commerce in Colombia was an extremely difficult market.
In 2010, Colombia’s e-commerce market was experiencing growth, fueled by an emerging middle class with higher disposable incomes and increasing internet access, with broadband connections jumping from 2.13 million at the start of the year. That’s when the best friends figured out they had to come up with a new idea.
Instead, they decided to knock on doors of cafés, restaurants, and bakeries around Bogota. The coffee beans caught up really quickly and started making some noise in Colombia.
For the first couple of years, they distributed to local businesses until they were able to open their first location in Colombia.
In columbia, the business had three lines of income. The first was wholesaling to businesses on a weekly basis, then it was their own stores that they had running, and the e-commerce online platform that they currently have.
During Covid 19, Colombia struggled with the virus which lead to not having alot of aid for small businesses. A lot of the businesses that were wholesale started to close, or starting cutting cost, one of those cost were coffee.
The stores in Columbia had over 153 clients, and it dropped to eight overnight when the cutting cost kicked in. Many of the restaurants that had Sarmiento’s Vereda Central products became ghost/ hidden kitchens, which means it was only selling food to go, and no coffee service at all.
Unfortunately, Sarmiento had to come to a decision to shut down his stores in Colombia in 2021, as well as their wholesale line because they had a very large and expensive operation.
But on the other hand, the e-commerce platform just exploded. The company went from zero to 100 in a matter of days. Sarmiento decided that in Colombia, the business is just going to focus on their online sales and exporting, which is led by Santiago.
In Colombia, millions of individuals who previously favored in-person shopping and payments abruptly transferred these tasks to online platforms. In 2022, the country boasted over 26 million online buyers, accounting for nearly three-quarters of its internet-using population. That year, Colombia ranked as the third- largest e-commerce market in Latin America, trailing only giants Brazil and Mexico.
Sarmiento and his wife Lara, migrated to Canada in 2018, establishing themselves in Oakville because his wife’s family has lived there for a while now. They would travel to the country on holidays to visit his in-laws, and said this was a great place to raise a family and it only made sense to move to Canada and be with his wife’s immediate family.
They prepared to hit the ground running and upon arrival, opened a new location in Oakville, Ontario, in April 2018. The company was able to gain attention and run smoothly during the covid era when customers were buying their coffee beans online. There are currently two stores in Oakville.
Business started picking up when Scotia Plaza, located in downtown Toronto, reached out to say that they had seen their store online and wanted to offer them space in their building. This became their third location. They opened the doors to this location in December 2021.
They hit the jackpot again, when Eaton Centre also opened their doors to a Vereda Central location on the third floor at the south end of the shopping centre.
The next store is located at the TD tower on Wellington Street West.With three stores located in the downtown core, Sarmiento says the locations will help the business grow.
“Having a location at one of the popular malls is a huge advantage. It invites the world to see all the amazing stores Eaton Centre has to offer along with the best coffee,” he said.
The colors on the logo are a mix of vibrant colors. They represent each of the region’s farm flags from where they get the beans.
But they recognized that this success could not have happened without the customers and communities supporting them.
“We understood that we were super close to Toronto Metropolitan University. I was on a budget back in my days when I was going to school. So, I was thinking of that and said, ‘How can we give these [ eager students to thrive] a little help? We can help them out with the coffee, –with high-end quality beans. Let’s just give them a discount,” he said.
Stopping by the coffee shop at Eaton Centre, a total of 45 Toronto Metropolitan University students stopped by to grab a fresh coffee throughout the afternoon.
Students of TMU can show their student card and get a 15% discount on any coffee or drink. They also have a variety of breakfast and afternoon combos and TMU-student exclusive discounts.
