St. Paul coffee shop transports customers to Latin America
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Hispanic population is growing in Minnesota. In total, more than 6% of the population is Hispanic. As the population grows, businesses grow too.
An east metro couple from Honduras is bringing the cultures together.
Abogados Café is in Como Park, but the inside takes you to Honduras. It's the brainchild of Ofelia Ponce and her husband, Inti Martínez-Alemán, who runs a law firm upstairs.
"Eighty, 90% of my clients are Hispanic, Spanish speakers. Those Hispanic are very diverse, they come from Mexico, Argentina and Chile and they have backgrounds from high-power executives to low-income workers," Martínez-Alemán said. "Regardless of their background, socio-economic status that they come from, they are very grateful that there's a Spanish-speaking lawyer serving areas of law for which there is few or no Spanish-speaking lawyers."
The same is true downstairs at the coffee shop.
"We greet them with 'Buenos dias' and thank them with 'Muchos gracias.'" Ponce said.
The couple, who are both lawyers and native Hondurans, opened the first Latina-owned coffee shop in the state two years ago.
Since then they've expanded into a thriving catering business.
"That's been great, bringing the coffee shop to the people instead of people coming here," Ponce said. "We want to let people know what they are drinking. They are not drinking any coffee, it's being carefully crafted by women in Latin America and we want to let people know that."
They want people to know the look and taste of their homeland, but also the feeling.
"We just appreciate connection is Latin America. We treasure that, we value that. For us, it's very important to be with people and get to feel their essence and get to know them," Ponce said.
The name of the coffee shop, Abogados, translates to the word "lawyer" in Spanish.
One of their most famous drinks amongst Minnesotans, to their surprise, is a very spicy cayenne latte.