Editor's note:
Full names have been removed from this story due to a notice from the San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health regarding home kitchen operations.
Luna has always liked coffee. Growing up in a Mexican household, the psychology senior has fond memories of her parents drinking café de olla, and her first job was fittingly at a coffee shop in her hometown.
When Luna moved to San Luis Obispo for college, she realized how prevalent coffee culture was here. Out of the 20 plus coffee shops in San Luis Obispo, Luna says she has been to almost all of them and realized how coffee shops serve to build community and a space for people to connect.
Luna’s passion for coffee started to take shape when she hosted a home cafe for her friends this quarter, who encouraged her to bring this idea to the public and create her own pop-up coffee shop. Initially, Luna was hesitant, but with some encouragement Luna thought it would be a fun project to pursue.
Luna brought the idea to her friend Meza, an aerospace engineering senior.
“I remember telling [Meza], I was like, ‘Should we end up doing this? Like, do you think it would be fun?’” Luna recalled.
While this is Luna and Meza’s last quarter at Cal Poly, the pair decided it would be fun to try to create their own pop-up coffee shop, Luna Cafe, before they graduate.
Luna Cafe, based in San Luis Obispo, has only been open for a little over a month but since the beginning Luna has been committed to making sure her cafe operates with quality and intentionality in mind.
It started with friends helping Luna and Meza — taking photos of the drinks, spreading the word around and sharing about the pop-up cafe on Instagram, where they do most of their advertising.
“A big one of them has been just talking,” Luna said. “So like one person will be like, ‘Oh yeah, I just got a coffee from here.’ Or they’ll be walking around and then my friends will text me, ‘oh, my god, someone just asked for your Instagram.’”
When thinking about how she wanted to source the matcha and coffee beans for her drinks, Luna prioritized sourcing from small businesses or businesses owned by people of color.
“My parents are eloteros in Bakersfield, so they’ve already been in, like, the wholesale market,” Luna said. “So they helped me find a lot of different websites and like people who produce.”
Luna sources her coffee beans from a small Native American-owned business called Sunflower Coffee, and her matcha from Desnudo, a Texas-based company run by two Latino brothers who source their matcha from Japan.
“I’m Mexican, and then Meza is Salvadorian and Honduran,” Luna said. “So I always knew that I wanted to represent, I guess, each other in a way, and that’s also why our bunny’s brown.”
The Luna Cafe logo, a brown bunny with pink rosy cheeks and orange bows on each ear, was designed by Meza, who manages the social media for the pop-up and runs the cash register during opening hours.
For Meza, the best part of the experience at Luna Cafe so far is the chance to interact with the community when people visit the pop-up.
“Meeting a bunch of new people, just seeing their faces after they have the coffee is surprisingly enjoyable,” Meza said. “I’m always the customer at coffee shops, so being on the other side is funky fresh. It’s kind of cool.”
Getting Luna Cafe running for the weekend is a three day process, Luna said, with Friday devoted to prepping and trialing and Saturday and Sunday opening the pop-up to the public.
Some of the menu items Luna serves at the pop-up are an iced vanilla latte and an iced brown sugar latte with cinnamon and vanilla cream foam. Other rotating offerings include the banana cream matcha, the iced banana latte with cajeta foam and banana cinnamon rolls, according to Luna Cafe’s Instagram.
“I did my Cit latte based on what I drink every day, or like, where, when I go to a coffee shop, what am I looking for?” Luna said.
As for the future of Luna Cafe, Meza says he’s open to wherever this journey takes him.
“I would really like to see it get bigger. It’d be pretty cool,” Meza said. “Right now we’re seeing where it goes with like, this quarter the 10 weeks, see how much hype we can build up.”
This story originally appeared in the May printed edition of Mustang News. Check out more stories from the issue here.