Cafe Con Papi on East Sixth Street opened this year with little initial fanfare in an unassuming small building. Inside colorful, evocative murals start to give a different sense of a special place.
The story of its owner, Jose Delgado, who previously worked as a mixologist in Miami, is full of intricate coffee-linked layers, leading to a quick success story in Reno.
Regular clientele now comes in looking for delicious lattes, including favorites Café Con Agave, Café Con Leche and Café Con Platano. Word of mouth quickly spread about the quality and uniqueness of these offerings, while the five star Yelp reviews kept coming.
As indicated in comments, there are no quality shortcuts at this coffee place. Delgado sources his beans from Latin America, having travelled to different parts of the continent, to get familiarized with coffee and the entirety of its process.
“I got to see how my fellow Latinos processed and appreciated how a single seed from the ground up was not only a lifestyle, but a culture shock to me,” Delgado told Our Town Reno during a recent interview.
He’s constantly working to create unique new drinks using traditional Hispanic flavors. For him the reward is when customers try something new or get exposed to a culture they might not be familiar with.
For the Hispanic community the biggest reward is being able to help his customers relive a memory. “When you get comments like I haven't had cafe de olla since I was a child, it breaks me down in tears, stuff like that really impacts you,” Delgado said.
His family has been some of his biggest supporters, in particular his father. Delgado named the shop based on inspiration from his dad. “It all comes down to familiarity and having that cup of coffee with my dad every morning,” he said. “I still remember how he would always say get a business mijo, be your own boss.”
The shop's menu also has a few drinks named after family members, some of which are to honor their memory or to give back to his family for always being there. Other names are just tributes to Hispanic culture like one of his drinks Luna. Delgado hired one of his long time friends, Abel Perez, a muralist and tattoo artist, to paint his parents portrait on the walls of the shop along with other beautiful pieces. “I wanted to capture the feel of how people tend to work in the field.”
In the future Delgado hopes to open more Cafe con Papis across Nevada. “I get a lot of people from out of town, based on my reviews and just hearing people’s comments, the way they experience the coffee, they keep telling me to venture out into Sparks or they wished they had a spot like this in Vegas,” he said.
Delgado wants to encourage more people to come down to his coffee shop and try something new and is so grateful for those who have supported him this far.
“Cafe Con Papi is a home for all walks of life but also a tribute to our Latin ancestors and coffee farmers who continue on working in the fields day and night providing quality coffee for the world,” he said.