We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ofelia Ponce & Inti Martínez-Alemán a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ofelia Ponce & Inti Martínez-Alemán, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Why Abogados? My husband and I were born and raised in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where we are both “Abogados” (“Attorneys”, in Spanish). He is licensed to practice law in Minnesota and New York, and I joined him in his practice as a legal analyst in 2019 after graduating from a Master of Law. The law industry is very demanding and stressful. You need to keep going non-stop. We would start our mornings at the office breakroom brewing coffee. Our conversations revolved on the different coffee notes, regions, cultures, and customs. Coffee soothed and energized us, it became part of our family, hence our website name, www.coffeeinlaw.com. It is our passion for coffee and law that inspired us to share with others the Latin American coffee experience.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Abogados Café (AC) started with an online shop, offering beans from México, Honduras, Perú and Colombia and five months ago we opened a brick-and-mortar shop in the Como Park Area of St. Paul, Minnesota. AC focuses on offering Latin American specialty coffee. Our beans are USDA organic, single origin and fair trade certified . This last one is significant to us because it ensures that farmers and workers are paid fair prices and wages, work in safe conditions, protect the environment, and earn community development funds to improve their lives. As Latin Americans ourselves it is important to us to support development in the region, abiding by ethical business standards in the coffee beans that we select.
We are a wife and husband team. We both grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. As high school sweethearts, we dated on-and-off over the years as our pursuit of careers in the legal profession carried us to America for college and, eventually, back to Honduras to practice law. Inti moved to Minnesota around eight years ago and founded Ceiba Fôrte Law Firm, where we serve Spanish-speaking clients in business, civil and employment litigation matters. The couple started working together after Ofelia graduated with her Masters of Law from MitchellHamline School of Law.
Opening a coffee shop was always Ofelia´s dream . A couple of years ago, she began envisioning a place where Latin American culture would be celebrated and the community would feel welcomed. The café opened at 1053 Dale St. N. incorporated Latin American art and design with elements of the couple’s life as Abogados (Spanish for attorneys).
When you walk in, the first thing you see is a perspective painting of Antigua, Guatemala by artist Tomás Araya.
Arches, stone tiles and other elements of the interior were each hand-picked by Ponce in hopes of transporting customers the scenic, historic communities of Latin America. The couple aims to transport every customer to small town in Latin America and highlight their beaty.
Abogados Café is the first law-themed coffee shop in America. There’s plenty of legalese on the menu — speciality drinks include the “Fearless Lawtte”, “Ex Parte”, ReSipsa Lawquitur” and “Motion Granted”. Our Christmas Menu offers: “Sanction Clause” Rudolph Law”, “Hot Pursuit”, “Chilling Effect”.
The Rudolph Law for example, is a lawtte with sage and eggnog. The “Sanction Clause” is a mulling spice lawtte.
The Peruvian decaf, is the best in town. And, customers looking for a plain old black drip coffee will also find what they’re looking for.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Two things:
1. In the early stages one of the biggest struggles was financing. Lenders kept telling us why a coffee business was not a good idea. We were able to find a bank that believed in our idea and approved finance.
2. Inti and I are big believers in mentorship. When I started with the planing I reached out to different coffee owners to learn more about their experiences, challenges and success. I probably reached put to 32 and did not get one response. It was discouraging. We took it upon ourself to read and learn more about coffee.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Word of mouth! We are very grateful to all our customers for sharing about the coffee shop with their family, friends, co-workers, ect.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.coffeeinlaw.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abogadoscafe/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abogadoscafe
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/abogados-caf%C3%A9/
Image Credits
Rachel Arnold