Barberia Barbershop

Barberia Barbershop traces its roots to a single barber chair inside Roosevelt & Company in downtown Huntsville, Alabama, where founder Roberto “Berto” Contreras opened the business in 2019. Originally from Atlanta, Contreras built Barberia from that one-chair start into a small, growing barbershop operation with a presence in more than one part of the city.

The downtown location remains at 114 Clinton Avenue East, inside Roosevelt & Co., where the shop first opened. In October 2023, Barberia expanded with a second, larger location on University Drive, a five-chair shop that gave the growing barbershop more capacity than the original single-chair setup could offer. A third location, described on the shop’s site as a barber academy on Leeman Ferry Road, is listed as a future addition to the business.

Contreras, a master barber with more than a decade of experience, has described the shop’s mission in terms that go beyond a simple haircut, framing each visit as a kind of transformation and the shop itself as a space for community connection built on traditional barbershop values. That framing shapes how the shop presents itself, less as a quick-service haircut stop and more as a destination built around craft and repeat relationships with clients.

The University Drive location sits at 6125 University Drive, Suite B20, near the IKEA store in Huntsville, making it a recognizable landmark for people unfamiliar with the immediate area. Having two active locations, one downtown and one near University Drive, gives Barberia a footprint on both sides of the city, useful for clients who may work or live closer to one location than the other.

Services at Barberia are built around standard haircuts, beard trims, and hot towel shaves, delivered by a team of barbers working under Contreras’s direction. Clients can book appointments online through the shop’s booking system, which is run through the Squire platform, a booking tool built specifically for barbershops and used by independent shops in a number of cities.

For Huntsville residents interested in a barbershop with a clear founding story and a growing local footprint, Barberia offers two current locations, downtown and near University Drive, both run under Contreras’s ownership rather than as part of a larger franchise. The shop’s own website lists current contact information and booking links for both locations.

The growth from a single chair in 2019 to a five-chair location plus the original downtown shop by late 2023 reflects a fairly rapid expansion for an independently owned barbershop, and the addition of a planned barber academy on Leeman Ferry Road suggests Contreras is building toward training future barbers in addition to running client-facing shops. That combination of service and training is less common among small, independently owned barbershops, most of which stay focused solely on cutting hair rather than also developing new barbers.

Being located inside Roosevelt & Co. downtown gives the original Barberia location a bit of a different feel than a standalone storefront, since it shares space with another established downtown Huntsville business. The University Drive shop, by contrast, operates as its own five-chair space near a major retail landmark, giving clients on that side of the city a full-sized barbershop experience closer to home.

Hot towel shaves and beard trims remain part of Barberia’s core service list alongside standard haircuts, reflecting the traditional barbershop grooming Contreras has built his reputation on since first opening in 2019. For Huntsville clients who value a barber they can return to consistently over time, Barberia’s model, built around a named master barber and a small, trained team rather than rotating staff, is oriented specifically toward that kind of repeat relationship.

Booking through Squire, rather than a phone-only system, lets clients see available time slots for a specific barber at either location before committing to an appointment, which can be useful for anyone trying to fit a haircut into a tight schedule. Between its downtown roots and its newer University Drive expansion, Barberia has grown from a single chair into a small but recognizable name among independent barbershops in Huntsville.