Café Calle, a Latino-owned coffee shop reintroducing good coffee to underserved communities

In the heart of historic Central Avenue, Café Calle is made up of a team of coffee enthusiasts fueled by caffeine and sustainability.  

Opened in 2021, Café Calle is one of the only brick-and-mortar coffee shops serving specialty coffee to the underserved community of South Los Angeles. For Diana Martinez, the proud owner of the shop, coffee is more than a drink. It is its culture and community. The coffee shop is home to a large mural of a coffee farm in El Salvador, where Martinez and her family are from. The art piece also represents the goal of Cafe Calle: to reintroduce good coffee to the Latino community and other people of color.

“When this began, I always thought about my parents,” Martinez said. “When I started brewing coffee for myself, I would brew coffee for my dad and he didn’t really know what that was. He would always consume just instant coffee. A lot of our people come from places like Central America or South America, and they are known to grow good, high-quality coffee and I thought about how unfortunate it is that they're not able to enjoy it here.”

Café Calle offers a variety of cold brew flavors, teas, pour-overs and drip coffee, as well as their signature drinks like an Abuelita cold brew, honey lavender latte and Spanish latte, among others. Apart from drinks, Café Callé also offers pastries and food such as chicken pita wraps, bagels, acai bowls and crepés. Today, the shop has the loyal support of her community and Martinez said the shop now has customers who are regulars. But the success did not come easy. 

Before opening a shop, Martinez and her partner sold coffee as street vendors, at gigs and farmers markets. In the spring of 2020, they began selling coffee around the streets of L.A. through a mobile espresso bar. After a few months, they had a small but thriving coffee hub inside Plant Chica, a Latina-owned plant shop in West Adams. As they gained more customers, in 2021 Martinez and her partner began sharing their coffee at community markets and pop-ups and by the end of the year, they also began catering, something they continue to do today. 

“There were a lot of learning curves in the beginning. I knew that if we wanted to keep growing the mobile espresso bar, we needed to invest in a bigger car, better equipment and just little things that would help us grow, so we did. And so, little by little, we got more into community markets. We got a little residency at the Plant Chica shop, all while we still worked our full-time jobs. We hustled it out and put all of our savings into the shop,” Martinez said.

There are 20 Starbucks coffee shops in an approximately 2-mile radius around Café Calle, something that inspired Martinez to open Café Calle and offer alternative coffee to the people in the community, which is majority Latino. 

“Our coffee beans come from El Salvador and other places in Latin and Central America,” Martinez said. “I also thought about how we should try to highlight people of color or different countries that are bringing in coffee. Many people, like our parents, don't want to go to places like Starbucks because they don't know how to ask for a coffee they like. Maybe it's the language, or maybe it's just a little intimidating. We wanted to change that. When people arrive, we greet them and talk to them in Spanish, if that's the language they are comfortable speaking, or we explain to them where we're getting our coffee from and the different ways we can prepare it for them.”

Café Calle offers free Wi-Fi and work spaces for customers to be able to work, socialize or simply enjoy a cup of coffee. Music from Latin American artists like Juanes, Caifanes, Soda Stereo, Julieta Venegas, Don Omar and Romeo Santos fills every corner of the shop. Martinez and her team like to think of the shop as a community-based space. 

On the weekends, the coffee shop is often used as a community hub where artists or organizations facilitate financial literacy workshops, open mics and put family events together like vision-board making, small business meetings and markets, among other things.

The coffee shop also fosters a lot of small businesses. Those who come in can find stickers, coffee beans and art pieces from a variety of small vendors. “A lot of the items in this shop are super intentional. I work with many small vendors and I collaborate with them and let them place their products here or leave their business cards or event flyers,” Martinez said. “I feel like if we all work together, we can all grow together and I've seen that happen. I really appreciate the vendors that we have here.”

One of the most popular items in the shop is the library, located in one of the corners of the shop. Books are arranged on a bookshelf, and customers are free to read, take or drop off any book. Martinez’s interest in coffee began with a book and bringing that into her coffee shop is something she was interested in. “I read and know the history of coffee because I read a whole book of coffee. I thought it'd be nice to have a little library to get a book in case people didn’t want to be on their phones or laptops, and since then people have left and taken a lot of great books,” she said. 

Martinez hopes that Café Calle continues to be a space that fosters community and that the shop continues to grow. “When we opened, we only had one or two people sitting here and now, as you can see, the shop is busier. That's already a big accomplishment, to have people comfortable enough to keep coming back,” Martinez said. 

Cafe Calle is located at 3310 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles, CA 9001, and it is open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.