Café Banna Is Easy to Like but Harder to Recommend

There’s a very specific type of café that Bogotá has been producing at scale over the past few years. It usually has a soft color palette, a friendly logo, a strong Instagram presence, and a mission statement built around origin, and experience. Café Banna fits squarely into that category — and yet, after multiple visits, it also embodies the main problem with it.

Banna wants to be many things at once: a specialty coffee shop, a coworking refuge, a cultural hub, a tasting space, a retail brand, and a weekend experience lab. On paper, that’s ambitious and exciting. In practice, it results in a place that looks great, sounds thoughtful, and delivers inconsistently, especially where it matters most: coffee quality relative to price, and service.

We’ve been to Café Banna enough times — and paid close enough attention to both the menu and the surrounding discourse — to say this clearly:
Banna is not a bad café. But it is absolutely overhyped.

The Space: Cute, Calm, and Designed to Be Liked

Let’s start with what Banna does well.

The space is undeniably charming. Warm tones, soft lighting, clean lines, and a layout that invites you to linger. It’s the kind of café where you can sit with a laptop for a few hours, read, meet someone for a low-pressure coffee, or kill time between errands. There’s nothing aggressive or chaotic about it. In a city that can be loud and overstimulating, that counts.

It’s also a space that photographs beautifully. The installations, cups, tables, and graphic identity are all carefully curated. This is a café that understands branding — and understands its audience. You can tell it was designed with intention, not improvised.

For coworking, casual meetings, or a slow weekday coffee, Banna works. In fact, this might be its strongest use case: a pleasant, neutral space that doesn’t demand much of you.

But cafés don’t survive on aesthetics alone — especially not when they position themselves as specialty coffee destinations.

The Coffee: Fine, Sometimes Good, Rarely Memorable

Here’s where the experience starts to fade out.

Banna talks a lot about origin, process, tasting, and education. They host cuppings. They offer a Degustación de Café en la Mesa for $50.000. They sell beans and gear. The language and knowledge is there. The intention is there.

The coffee itself?
It’s okay. Sometimes good. But not outstanding — and certainly not among Bogotá’s best.

On the menu, prices are reasonable at first glance:

• Espresso: $5.500
• Cappuccino / Latte (P/G): $8.000 / $12.000
• Flat White: $12.000
• Filtered coffee: $10.000–$15.000

These numbers sit comfortably within the specialty coffee range in Bogotá. The problem is not the price — it’s the value relative to quality.

We’ve had cups that were balanced and pleasant, and others that felt flat, underwhelming, or simply forgettable. Nothing offensive. Nothing disastrous. But nothing that makes you stop mid-sip and think, okay, this is special.

And in a city with cafés like Tropicalia, Libertario, Azahar, Catación Pública, Cafe 18, or even smaller, quieter spots that consistently nail extraction and profiling, “fine” is not enough.

Banna’s coffee feels like it wants to be educational, but often lands in the middle ground: accessible, inoffensive, safe. That’s not inherently bad — but it doesn’t justify the reputation it’s built.

Pastry & Food: High Prices, Modest Payoff

The pastry menu follows a similar pattern.

There’s variety: ponqués, tortas, brownies, croissants, alfajores, cookies, cinnamon rolls, panzerotti vegano. On paper, it’s generous. In reality, execution and portion size don’t always align with price.

Several reviews — and our own experience — point to the same issue:
items that feel expensive for what they deliver.

• Cookies that are small and basic for $9.000
• Pastries that look better than they taste
• Limited availability of certain items, even early in the day

A coworker I went with puts it bluntly: good intentions, but disappointing results. Another person that was on the table besides us noticed we were reviewing the place and told us that what they ordered wasn’t available — twice.

Nothing here is terrible. But again, nothing stands out.

If you’re hungry, Banna is not the place you go to be impressed. It’s the place you go because you’re already there… or because you didn’t find anything better nearby.

Service: The Biggest Weak Point

This is where Café Banna consistently loses points — and where the criticism is not anecdotal, but structural.

Through our lived experience, the same pattern appears:

• Slow or inattentive service
• Tables not being attended, even when the café isn’t full
• Confusion around ordering or availability
• A feeling that staff is overwhelmed, disengaged, or simply absent

This has happened a couple of times, the first time I brushed it off“` since it was a busy hour. On the second time it could not be a coincidence and simply left, lately I discovered that looking into other reviews, this was no accident. That second time I was denied table service at midday on a weekday. Another acquaintance of mine mentions tables being abandoned because no one came to take the order. And I also noticed a lack of accountability or self-criticism when issues are raised.

That’s not a one-off bad day. That’s a systemic service problem.

In a café that positions itself as a community space — and charges specialty prices — service matters. A lot. And here, Banna consistently underperforms.

It creates a strange dissonance: a calm, beautiful space where you feel slightly… ignored.

Experiences & Events: Good Ideas, Mixed Execution

One of Banna’s most interesting angles is its programming.

They host coffee tastings, workshops, collaborations with artisans, and weekend events that blend coffee with craft, design, or conversation. On Instagram, this looks great. And conceptually, it is great.

These events are probably where Banna’s vision makes the most sense.

If you attend a scheduled tasting, a workshop, or a curated experience, you’re more likely to get focused attention, context, and engagement. The space becomes activated. The narrative clicks.

This is important, because it suggests something:
Banna works better when it’s structured than when it’s casual.

As a café you drop into randomly, service and consistency falter.
As an event space with a defined program, it shines more.

The Retail Side: Coherent, Thoughtful, Secondary

Banna’s shop — beans, tools, branded items — is clean and well-presented. It reinforces the brand’s identity and gives the café a sense of depth beyond the counter.

That said, it doesn’t feel like the main draw. It’s complementary, not central. You don’t go to Banna to shop — you shop because you’re already there.

The Hype Problem

Here’s the real issue -aside from the service-.

Café Banna has been talked about as if it’s the place. A must-visit. A standout. A reference point. And it isn’t.

It’s a nice café with good intentions, a pleasant atmosphere, and uneven delivery. The hype suggests excellence. The reality delivers adequacy.

That gap — between expectation and experience — is where disappointment creeps in.

If Banna positioned itself more humbly, it would probably be received more generously. But when you build a narrative around specialty, education, and experience, people expect precision, warmth, and consistency.

Right now, Banna offers moments of all three — but not reliably.

So, When Is Café Banna Worth It?

Let’s be fair.

Banna is worth visiting if:

• You want a calm place to work or read
• You’re meeting someone casually and don’t need to be impressed
• You’re attending one of their structured tastings or events
• You’re nearby and want a decent coffee in a pleasant space

It is not the place you go if:

• You’re chasing the best specialty coffee in Bogotá
• You expect attentive, polished service
• You’re sensitive to price-to-quality ratios

Final Verdict

Café Banna is not a failure. It’s also not yet a reference point.

It’s a well-designed, well-intentioned café that has built a strong brand faster than it has built operational consistency. The coffee is okay. The space is nice. The ideas are solid. The execution, especially in service, lags behind.

Bogotá’s coffee scene is too mature, too competitive, and too skilled for “cute and fine” to carry the weight of hype.

If Banna tightens its service, raises its coffee game, and aligns experience with expectation, it could become something truly special. Right now, it’s a place we like being in — but not a place we actively recommend as a destination. And in this city, that distinction matters.