Tirana · Albania
Antigua Specialty Coffee
Antigua Specialty Coffee roasts in Tirana, Tirana County.
Since 1995 · Julia Bozo's family (Bozo family roastery, 1995); Julia Bozo (Antigua Specialty Coffee cafe, 2020)
Overview
Antigua Caffe was founded in Tirana in 1995 by Julia Bozo's family, opening Albania's first specialty coffee roastery at a time when the country's cafe culture was dominated by Italian-style dark espresso and Turkish coffee. In 2020, after returning from the United Kingdom, Julia opened Antigua Specialty Coffee — the cafe arm of the family business — and remains the only operation roasting its own specialty coffee in Albania, serving alongside European specialty roasters like Berlin's Fjord.
Known for
- Albania's first specialty coffee roastery — founded 1995 by the Bozo family
- Cafe arm Antigua Specialty Coffee opened by Julia Bozo in 2020 after returning from the UK
- The only Albanian operation roasting its own specialty coffee in-house
- Pour-over and espresso bar serving Antigua's own roasts plus Fjord (Berlin) and other European specialty roasters
- Educational mission: introducing Albanians to single origins and brewing methods beyond espresso
Why it matters
Albania has one of the highest cafe-per-capita densities in Europe — sitting in a cafe is the social default — yet Italian-influenced dark espresso dominated for thirty years and the term 'specialty coffee' is still poorly understood locally. Antigua is the cafe most often credited as Albania's third-wave starting point, and Julia Bozo is the operator who took her family's 1990s Italian-leaning roastery and pivoted it toward lighter, traceable, single-origin coffee that could stand against any European third-wave bar.
Production
- filter equipment
- V60 pour-over, Chemex
- roastery location
- Tirana, Albania
Café
Kompleksi Kika 2, Rruga Anton Lufi, Tiranë
Recognitions
- Recognized as Albania's first specialty (third-wave) coffee shop