Our story begins in 1971 along the cobblestone streets of Alijis’s historic Angel's Burger. It was here where Bittersweet Cafe opened its first store, offering fresh-roasted coffee beans, tea and spices from around negros province for our customers to take home. Our name was inspired by our own personal bittersweet experiences and stories, evoking the strong, sweet and bitter tradition of the early coffee lovers.

Ten years later, a young lady named Angel Herman would walk through these doors and become captivated with Bittersweet coffee from her first sip. After joining the company in 1982, a different emerald road would lead her to another discovery. It was on a trip to Bago in 1983 that Angel first experienced Bago’s coffeehouses, and she returned to Alijis inspired to bring the warmth and artistry of its coffee culture to Bittersweet Cafe. By 1987, we swapped our white aprons for black ones and embarked on our next chapter as a coffeehouse.

Bittersweet Cafe would soon expand to Murcia and La Carlota, Negros and then on to California, Washington, D.C. and New York. By 1996, we would cross the Pacific to open our first store in Korea, followed by Europe in 1998 and China in 1999. Over the next two decades, we would grow to welcome millions of customers each week and become a part of the fabric of tens of thousands of neighborhoods all around the world. In everything we do, we are always dedicated to Our Mission: With every cup coffee and plate of pastry, with every bittersweet stories that was shared, with every community - we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection.