Syra Coffee

Syra Coffee is a Barcelona-based specialty roaster and café chain founded by Yassir Raïs, with its first location opening in October 2015. What started as a compact take-away coffee spot has since grown into one of Spain's most recognizable specialty chains, anchored by a roastery in the city's Gràcia neighborhood. The operation sits at an unusual intersection: specialty-grade, single-origin sourcing scaled across dozens of retail points.

Raïs built Syra on an explicit mission to democratize good coffee — his phrase — making traceable, seasonal specialty coffee accessible beyond the narrow circle of enthusiast cafés. The expansion has been aggressive: as Raïs detailed in a 2024 YouTube interview tracing the company's growth, Syra had reached 43 coffee-to-go locations across Spain. That scale would be unremarkable in the third-wave context were it not for the sourcing model Syra maintains: small-producer lots, direct traceability, and a weekly roasting schedule out of the Gràcia facility.

Syra's current offering spans a broad producing-country range — Uganda, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Rwanda — with named lots like the Bukonzo Ana from Uganda and Muraho Women from Rwanda suggesting producer-level relationship sourcing rather than commodity purchasing. The homepage notes that Syra curates, imports, roasts, and serves its coffees in-house, claiming full chain custody. Roasting runs weekly out of Barcelona, with whole-bean and pre-ground available for both filter and espresso preparation.