Inside the new Dynamic Coffee Roasters shop, La Galeria, in Pittsburgh. All images courtesy of Dynamic Coffee Roasters.
Pittsburgh-based Dynamic Coffee Roasters is in continuous action with the opening of its second cafe, La Galeria, designed to put coffee producers front and center.
Large framed photos of the producers behind the shop’s coffees line the tall, eggshell-white walls of the new East Liberty location, where natural light pours in through 17-foot-tall windows. The owners plan to add spotlights soon, giving the space an even more gallery-like feel.
A long cupping table anchors the room and doubles as community seating during cafe hours. Co-owners Andrew Delgado and Dylan Thomas finished the shop’s wooden seats, tabletops and accents themselves.
“I tried to have [the seats] be as comfortable as possible,” Delgado told Daily Coffee News. “I like when people hang out and don’t feel like the chairs are chasing them away.”
The new neighborhood cafe arrives roughly two years after Dynamic opened its 900-square-foot first shop in the Highline building in South Side Flats. Thomas and Delgado founded Dynamic in 2022 as a wholesale roastery, then expanded the business in 2023 to help Honduran producers sell green coffee to other U.S. roasters.
Delgado, who was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, comes from a coffee-producing family that sold its farms amid low prices and an unsustainable market. In 2014, he opened a specialty coffee cafe in San Pedro Sula, running it for one year before moving into education-focused roles with producers and exporters.
In India’s Araku Valley, Delgado trained Adivasi growers in specialty coffee production, processing, roasting and barista skills. He later returned to Honduras to lead farmer education programs for San Pedro Sula-based exporter Caffex, teaching producers low-cost ways to improve cup quality.
Today, Dynamic roasts and serves coffees purchased directly from producers in Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras, using importers primarily for logistics.
“I usually meet the farmers before even trying their coffee,” Delgado said. “For us the priority is to work with great human beings. Because of my coffee processing background, I am usually able to provide help to farmers to elevate quality or profile, so if I try their coffee and it’s not what we want, I know how to get it to where we need it. We do it this way because the pillar of the relationship is the farmer, not the coffee. We can adjust and shape coffee, but not people.”
Roasting occurs in a 5,000-square-foot roastery and green coffee storage warehouse in Carnegie, outside of Pittsburgh. A 15-kilo-capacity Joper roaster handles production while smaller batches and competition roasts are done on a Stronghold S7 Pro roaster.
Open since March, Dynamic Coffee La Galeria is now focused on reaching profitability. After that, the team plans to turn toward its next project: a shop in Honduras.
“We want to create opportunities back home,” Delgado said. “It’s important to know that no one wants to leave their country. We leave to seek better opportunities to grow. If our moving here and building this company here can in some way allow us to build opportunities for people in Honduras, I think this would be the next goal to hit.”
Dynamic Coffee La Galeria is located at 6101 Penn Ave. in Pittsburgh.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
