Cafe Cà Phê is opening their first brick and mortar location. The Kansas City, Missouri cafe focusing on Vietnamese coffee and preparations has grown by leaps and bounds in the year and a half since it first opened, beginning its life as a stand outside a nail shop before evolving into a mobile food truck to now, putting down roots in KCMO’s Columbus Park neighborhood. But in order to make these dreams a reality, Cafe Cà Phê needs your help. That’s why they created a GoFundMe page to help raise the $75,000 to bring their brick-and-mortar cafe to life.
Started in October of 2020 by Broadway-actor-turned-coffee-shop-owner Jackie Nguyen—interviewed here by Umeko Motyoshi on the A Better Table podcast—Cafe Cà Phê touts itself as “Kansas City’s first Vietnamese mobile coffeeshop.” Using coffee from Nguyen Coffee Supply, the Brooklyn-based coffee roaster focusing on specialty-grade Vietnamese Arabica and Robusta, they are now trying to remove “mobile” from that distinction. Per the GoFundMe, Columbus Park is “a predominant Italian and Vietnamese neighborhood,” and one with no coffee shop to speak of. There, Nguyen hopes to continue Cafe Cà Phê’s mission of inclusion and diversity, “amplifying those who feel marginalized: LGBTQI+ community, Womxn, the Black Community and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community.”
In lieu of seeking funding from banks or traditional investors, Cafe Cà Phê is taken to crowdsourcing the final $75,000 needed to get the cafe up and running. The campaign has already netted $50,000 of its total goal, and the funds will go towards expenses typical of starting a coffee shop: electrical, plumbing, HVAC, seating, murals, bathrooms, an espresso machine, a new bar, and ice machines and refrigerators.
Still, Nguyen and company need one last push to make it over the hump. If you are able, consider donating to Cafe Cà Phê’s GoFundMe campaign and help further enrich Kansas City’s already vibrant coffee scene. And if you aren’t financially able to give, consider sharing the campaign via your social networks to help get the word out. For more information, visit the Cafe Cà Phê GoFundMe page.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
