Chappopin Café is ‘brewing culture’ in Tucson through Latinx-inspired drinks

When Natalia Chappotin was around six years old, her dad would pour Café Bustelo espresso into a mug over a little bit of sweet condensed milk for her. 

“This is how you start your day,” she recalled him telling her. 

Coffee has always been a big part of Chappotin’s life. She grew up watching family “chismear,” or gossip, over a cup of coffee in the afternoons. Coffee wasn’t just something Chappotin and her family drank first thing in the morning to wake up; it’s something that has brought loved ones together at any hour of the day. 

That upbringing and traveling around the world trying coffee in different countries inspired her to open up her own coffee truck. For Chappotin, the smell of coffee is therapeutic. It brings her joy. 

That’s the feeling she wants to bring to her customers when they visit Chappopin Café, which she opened in 2023. The name Chappopin is a nickname she started using after the government misspelled her name in a document.

The food truck where she makes and sells drinks is located just outside a building north of downtown Tucson, next to a piñata shop and a bike shop. She also rents a small building next to where her food truck is parked, where she hosts meet-ups, markets and other community events.

Making coffee every morning used to be a chore of hers, Chappotin said. “Who would have thought I would have made it my full-time job?” 

'A love for our culture'

On a recent Saturday morning, salsa, reggaetón and cumbia beats played from a speaker as customers stood in line waiting to order one of Chappopin’s Latin-inspired drinks. 

The horchata latte is one of her most popular, made with homemade horchata and espresso. The café de olla is sweetened with piloncillo and cinnamon in a clay pot. 

The Monte Cristo, a Cuban-inspired latte made with sweet condensed milk, pays tribute to her late father and reminds her of those early days when he would prepare her sweet coffee. 

Chappotin stirred espresso into a half-filled cup of sweetened milk alongside her fiancé, who helped her prepare each order. 

Inside the building behind the truck, local vendors sold earrings and helped customers customize their own hats. About a dozen women talked about the book they wanted to read for their first book club meeting and groups of people sat in colorful chairs, drinking iced lattes and eating bagels and pastries. 

Customers took in the mural of a Cuban woman dancing on the streets of Havana inside the building, a recreation of a painting Chappotin’s parents gifted her when she was 14. 

“We wanted to pick something that was very important to us,” Chappotin said of the inspiration behind her truck and her menu. “What was very important was bringing up my culture, Cuban and Mexican. We wanted to incorporate it with our coffee, because we have a love for our culture.”

The idea of opening a coffee shop started for Chappotin more than 10 years ago when she visited Seattle, according to her lifelong friend Irma Medina, who has known Chappotin since they were 14. 

Chappotin managed a Tilly’s and a Rubs Massage Studio before taking the leap.

Chappotin decided to use her business management experience, took out a loan and bought a food truck. She and her fiancé turned what was once a taco truck into a teal blue coffee truck, fully redesigning and rebuilding the inside. Chappotin studied the coffee market, learned which espresso machine would be best for a truck and how to make unique recipes using locally-sourced ingredients. 

'A coffee shop is everything'

When Chappotin was a manager at Rubs Massage, she hung up a printed and framed photo of Frida Kahlo on her office wall. She was told to take it down because it might offend someone. 

At Chappopin Café, she unapologetically displays both of her cultures. On a wall in her shop, she’s hung a small black and white photo of Frida, a little guitar, mariachi hats — all personal connections to her and her soon-to-be husband’s Mexican roots. A shelf on the same wall holds her late mother-in-law’s cowgirl boots. 

On the side of her coffee truck, a Mexican woman and a Cuban woman are in the desert surrounded by cactus. The Cuban woman pours coffee into a mug. The Mexican woman lifts a coffee-colored shawl above her head. 

Chappotin hosts vendor pop-ups, Latin social dancing and cafecito y chisme nights, and she has plenty more ideas to bring the community together. She wants the café to be a place where people play dominoes and chess, where people network, meet and learn from one another about what’s happening in their communities. 

“A coffee shop is everything,” Chappotin said. “It could be a therapy session, it could be a work meeting, it could be anything you want it to be.”

Since opening, Chappotin has moved the truck twice, most recently in April to Stone Avenue, just north of downtown Tucson. Both moves were due to sudden, drastic rent increases and because she would quickly outgrow the space she was in.  

Each move has pushed Chappotin to grow, her friend Medina said. 

“Every time she's moved, it's evolved,” she said. “It's blossomed every single time.”

With every move, her loyal customers have followed her. 

Esmeralda Corella visited the shop for the first time in 2023. After driving by EcoGro, where Chappopin Café was first parked, and wondering aloud about the truck, her Instagram feed started promoting it, she said. It looked cute, so she decided to check it out. She has been hooked ever since. 

She visits the coffee shop every weekend. Over time, she started bringing a book to the café and reading while sipping on her coffee. Others started doing the same. Chappotin suggested Corella start a book club and encouraged Corella to take the lead. 

Corella sipped on another horchata latte on Saturday, as she led the first Book Chisme Book Club meeting, where the group would decide what book they’d be reading and how often and when they would meet. 

Corella admired Chappotin’s collaborative spirit and her desire to help other small local businesses thrive. That spirit is in everything she does at the café. The pastries she sells come from several local bakers. A new drink on her menu uses a smoked chai made by a local smoked BBQ cook who smokes honey, nuts, salts and other items. 

“She knows that when people that she collaborates with are successful, she's gonna be successful too,” Corella said. “It’s like the more you give, the more comes back to you.”

Stephanie Casanova is an independent journalist from Tucson, Arizona, covering community stories for 10 years. She is passionate about narrative, in-depth storytelling that is inclusive and reflects the diversity of the communities she covers. She recently covered the criminal justice beat at Signal Cleveland, where she shed light on injustices and inequities in the criminal legal system and centered the experiences of justice-involved individuals, both victims and people who go through the system and their impacted loved ones.