Amber Meier

Amber and Chris­t­ian Meier are a Cana­dian cou­ple who moved from Van­cou­ver to Girona eight years ago. Chris­t­ian is a pro­fes­sional cy­clist who rides for the Orica GreenEDGE team. The two have re­cently opened a cyclo-café in Girona, a pop­u­lar con­cept in Anglo-speak­ing coun­tries. La Fab­rica al­lows the cou­ple to in­dulge their dual pas­sions: cy­cling and good cof­fee. Amber showed us round and told us the story of the place.

1. Font de Fab­rica. A free water foun­tain to fill up your water bot­tles. We have a lot of cy­clists com­ing and hy­dra­tion is re­ally im­por­tant.

2. Rocket Espresso Ma­chine. Hand-made in Italy, our espresso ma­chine is a key in­gre­di­ent and the back­bone to pro­duc­ing a great cof­fee. We wanted the high­est qual­ity and this is like the Fer­rari of cof­fee ma­chines.

3. Our cash reg­is­ter seat. Our reg­is­ter is mounted on an au­then­tic bike seat. Chris­t­ian used it dur­ing a race in which his bike crashed but we kept the bike sad­dle as a sou­venir.

4. Fresh roasted cof­fees. Chris­t­ian sources the cof­fee beans and then works with a local micro-roaster to cre­ate the ideal pro­files to bring out the best in the cof­fee.

5. Cups. Our cups are in­spired by Japan, where bev­er­ages are held with two hands. Like this you feel part of it and be­come one with your bev­er­age. They are printed lo­cally in Sant Jordi Desvalls.

6. Our trea­sure chest benches. Au­then­tic old chests found at dif­fer­ent an­tique stores around Cat­alo­nia. Orig­i­nally we wanted them for stor­age but then re­al­ized that they work great as seats as well.

7. Our loy­alty cards.Nine dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sional cy­clists who all have a pas­sion for Rocket Espresso ma­chines and good cof­fee. If you buy nine cof­fees you get one for free.

8. Cop­per pip­ing de­tails. We wanted to ho­n­our and pre­serve the space as much as pos­si­ble, ac­cent­ing it with small in­dus­trial de­tails.

9. All of our bikes! We have bike park­ing, bikes on dis­play and bikes for sale! We pride our­selves on being very bike friendly! In ad­di­tion to road bikes, which are more for pro­fes­sion­als, we also have Fix­ies bikes - just town bikes any­one can use. We have bikes for every­one, even for kids.

10. Our sign: “Life is too short for bad cof­fee”. We made it our­selves, stained the wood and painted on the de­sign. We feel its the small de­tails that peo­ple see and ap­pre­ci­ate! www.​lafabrica.​cc