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Do You Prefer Café Bustelo, La Llave or Pilon?

9 months ago

3 min read

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Camila has never had any of the three. She did a taste test to pick her favorite. Is it the same as yours?

(Note from El Equipo: We have worked with coffee brands in the past and will likely do so again in the future. This piece however was not sponsored or influenced by any one brand.)

We did a blind taste test to determine whether Café Bustelo, Café La Llave or Café Pilon would be the coffee that we stocked up on during quarantine.

cafe bustelo — *Photo credit: Karen Vierbuchen*

When Coronavirus landed in the United States, people started hoarding things like toilet paper, flour, and hand sanitizers. Eventually even things like frozen pizzas disappeared, too. I don’t understand that, by the way. Whatever it was though, I don’t really need to tell you all this because you, just like me, were there. But, what I do need to tell you is that while everything was being gobbled up by Dick and Jane America, I was completely stressed out because I only needed one thing to get through the quarantine: coffee. Not just any coffee though, I needed my strong-like-bull Cuban coffee, daily at 2:30 pm and I was worried that I might not be able to sustain my habit if pandemic anxiety got everyone to the store before me.

The question though was… which coffee: Café Bustelo, Café La Llave or Café Pilon?

*Vegan chef Josh Solis pours coffee through a* colador de café*. Photo credit: Karen Vierbuchen*

Now, to be fair, I’m a Café Bustelo guy. I love the flavor, the strength ,and the punch it gives you straight out of a cafetera. And, to be completely transparent, Café Bustelo has been a sponsor of ours in the past. We like to drink their coffee, spend time with their people, and do things with their awesome yellow can. But, this video wasn’t sponsored by anybody. I wanted to make it independent. A game. It was completely unbiased and I made sure the decision wasn’t influenced by me.

Enter Camila. Camila, from Bogotá, Colombia.

Camila was the perfect candidate to taste the coffee. Her Colombian background gave her Juan Valdez-level street cred, her fun personality made her camera-ready and best of all… she had never tried any of the three coffees. She’s only been the States for about four months so she was the perfect scapegoat, allowing me to maintain complete deniability. Whichever coffee she deemed the winner would win fair and square.

And, to make sure that I was completely honest and kept Camila in the dark, I called in a few of my friends as witnesses. Zooming into the studio was Zuzy Martin Aly, Marissa Daniela, Chris Vázquez and Cray Novick. If you’ve seen any of our videos you know these people and know that they would completely call me out if I tried anything slippery.

We turned the cameras on. Poured the coffee into plain white, unlabeled coffee cups for Camila. And we let it rip.

Which coffee did she pick? Which did we wind up stocking up on for quarantine?

Watch the video above. And, pick up your favorite here: Café Bustelo, Café La Llave or Café Pilon here.