New coffee shop, roastery highlights Latino pride
A new coffee shop in town offers armadillo milk.
While the milk doesn’t come from actual armadillos, Haciendo Coffee Roasters, 116 W. Sixth St., created its own flavored milk and creamer for coffee drinks inspired by the flavors of tres leches cake.
The liquid’s name derives from the coffee business’ logo, which features a cactus and an armadillo — classic symbols from Mexico and Texas.
Like the logo, the business concept is based on co-owner and founder Billy Wiginton’s Latino heritage.
Although America’s coffee culture is largely based on that of Europe — many know the Italian espresso and latte — the majority of the world’s coffee beans come from countries populated by people of color.
Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopa were the top five coffee bean-producing nations in 2022, according to ourworldindata.org.
However, Wiginton noticed there weren’t many minority-owned coffee shops in the region, so he and his wife created their own, drawing from his mother’s Mexican heritage
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and his father’s Texan upbringing.
“With our branding, we just felt like it was important to include things that were familiar to people in Texas and probably of Mexican or any sort of Latino heritage that they might identify with,” Wiginton said.
In addition to the armadillo milk, the couple hopes to create a unique syrup that emulates the flavor of a traditional Mexican coffee beverage called café de olla, which is coffee brewed in a clay pot with raw brown sugar, an orange peel and spices including cinnamon and cloves.
The coffee house does its own roasting, with the couple using ethically sourced beans from Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, Nicaragua and Ethiopia.
“One of the things that we thought we could do in our sourcing was buy direct from farmers in Mexico first, which is what my family heritage is, and then Colombia and Guatemala,” Wiginton said. “And then, of course, we went to Ethiopia, which is where coffee started, and we are trying our hardest right now to source a coffee from China because I have an adopted son from China, and we thought it would be cool to include that in our lineup.”
Haciendo Coffee’s Latino pride shined during its grand opening Oct. 5, with local Latino-owned businesses, such as The Traveling Empanada, Upa Cookies and others, putting up tables at the event and providing food for the line of customers snaking out the door.
The business owners befriended one another through the local farmers markets Haciendo Coffee participated in before establishing its brick-andmortar store.
“Every vendor that was here on Saturday was someone who I met and connected with, either through a shared cultural heritage or a like-minded business model,” Wiginton said.
Good Life Taylor, Texas also participated in the grand opening, providing activities for families while they waited to order java. Kids could choose from rocks to bat and pumpkin wood cutouts to paint and decorate.
Good Life Taylor, Texas — a nonprofit raising money for community projects — also promoted its annual 5K run, which kicks off 8 a.m. Saturday in Bull Branch Park, 2500 Bel Air Drive. Haciendo Coffee has been a vendor at the event three years in a row.
“I’m a really big fan of Haciendo Coffee ever since the farmers market,” said Audrey Blum of Good Life Taylor, Texas. “(The slogan), ‘Good coffee for all people’ — I think that pretty much says everything about Billy, and that’s just my favorite thing to see. It’s just so welcoming to everybody, and it’s what Taylor needs.”
Haciendo Coffee is open daily, with doors closing early on Mondays and Tuesdays at noon so Wiginton can focus on roasting beans in-house.
The roastery sells single-origin coffee beans from its six source countries, its signature Tres Hombres blend, a cold brew blend and more. The roastery debuted a new blend on its grand opening day, named “6th and Talbot” after the corner where the new shop is located.
Being a specialty coffee lover, Wiginton began his roasting journey when his friend gave him raw coffee beans from the friend’s family farm in Uganda. Neither Wiginton nor his friend knew how to roast coffee beans, but Wiginton wanted to learn. So, he bought more coffee beans online and used a popcorn popper.
From then, Wiginton increased his skills and tools as he learned how to air-roast coffee.
“It was kind of just like a small interest turned into a hobby turned into a full business,” he said.
The business began as an online store, selling to customers and coffee shops across the U.S. To fulfill orders, Wiginton and his wife used shared commercial kitchens to roast the coffee beans and ran the store out of their home.
Now, with the new shop, the couple has upgraded their equipment and improved their worklife balance, as they can leave work behind once they lock the shop doors.
“The biggest change that my kids have noticed is when we lock the door and go home, we’re home and not at work,” Wiginton said.
In the future, the couple wants to focus on events that promote creativity and learning how to make things to honor the business’ name — “haciendo” means “making” in Spanish.
“That name, ‘Haciendo,’ came from previous dreams and ideas that my wife and I had about having either a place or a business that was about making things,” Wiginton said.
Wiginton doesn’t want to stop at coffee. “Maybe one day, there’ll be a ‘Haciendo Bakery’ or a Haciendo clothing line or something like that. Who knows? We’ll see,” he said.
