‘Home for ALL people’: Cafe owner is fighting Asian hate through coffee and community
In early April, a young white man walked into Cafe Cà Phê, a Vietnamese coffee shop in Kansas City’s West Bottoms, and asked eagerly for the “weirdest” drink.
“’Weird? I don’t know if we have anything weird, but we definitely have different things that you could try,’” Jackie Nguyen, 32, who owns the little mobile shop turned popup, said to him. “’Maybe a different word would be unique?’”
Nguyen, who is first-generation Vietnamese American, said she didn’t think the young man, who was wearing a sushi shirt and bucket hat, a skateboard in hand, had bad intentions. But it was still offensive.
“It angered me right away when he said it, but I know that it wasn’t malicious,” Nguyen (pronounced “win”) said. “It was just like, ‘come on man, think.’”
She told him she’d make him one of the most unique items on their menu, the Hella Good Latte. It’s a coffee drink with ube, a purple sweet potato. She even threw some sesame on it to make it “more unique.”
Asian culture in America has long been fetishized and labeled as exotic — Asian women in particular. Many have pointed to these narratives as contributing factors for the March mass shooting in Atlanta where a gunman shot and killed eight people, including six Asian women, at area spas. Rhetoric referring to the novel coronavirus as the “China virus,” some say, has contributed to the rise in hate crimes against the Asian American Pacific Islander community since the pandemic began.
From her small business in Kansas City, Nguyen expected the responsibility of teaching people about words and how not to “other” the AAPI community. If she didn’t want the responsibility, she said, she would have just opened a “regular” coffee shop.
Such teaching moments are difficult, but she took them on because she wants to see change. She picked Kansas City after touring with the Broadway musical “Miss Saigon” because she noticed a lack of attention being paid to Asian Americans.
Since opening the coffee truck last fall, even if it wasn’t getting as much attention then, her goal has been to bring more visibility to the AAPI community by teaching about the Asian narrative, Vietnamese culture and the Asian American experience through her business.
The majority of the attention when Cafe Cà Phê opened came because the concept was cool and unique, Nguyen said. And because she was opening a small business during a pandemic.
“But not because they felt like there was a lack or that there were deeper issues,” she said, noting that Anti-Asian violence was already spiking at the time.
People are paying attention to the root and core of her mission now, Nguyen said on a recent afternoon, a Kansas City hat perched on her head above her Black Lives Matter T-shirt.
Activism through coffee
Cafe Cà Phê, named for the Vietnamese words for “coffee,” started garnering more attention in the past couple weeks after Nguyen hosted a vigil to Stop Asian Hate that drew hundreds of people, including U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. In this, Nguyen became an unexpected — and sometimes reluctant — voice for the AAPI community in Kansas City.
She hesitates to label herself an activist. Despite the growing visibility on her, and her business, Nguyen doesn’t want to be the face of the movement, she said. There’s been a weight on her shoulders. She’s exhausted, worn down.
“I want to be loud and I want to be extremely proud and stand up for my community, but at the same time I’m terrified. It’s just the truth,” she said. “My activism is through my coffee shop, not through protests or rallies, because my original goal, my vision is to create a safe space for someone.”
Nguyen didn’t tell her mom, who lives in San Diego, about the vigil until after the fact. She was proud, but discouraged her daughter from being in the spotlight.
Her mother’s fear is understandable. Since the attacks toward Asian Americans began escalating in the early days of the pandemic, her mom doesn’t go alone on walks or to the grocery store.
“She was like, ‘you’re next Jackie,’” Nguyen recalled. “’Next time, don’t do that … just take it easy.’”
Nguyen was not raised to be outspoken. In her culture, she said, it’s deemed disrespectful. But she’s always been very opposite of that. She’s not demure. She’s tatted, forthright and she swears often.
“’Look, Mom, I don’t do this for money,’” she said after the vigil. “’People need to know. No one’s going to do it, so I’m going to do it.’”
She said it feels like a catch-22 at times. She knows that so many Asian Americans like her are the children of immigrants who fled horrendous conditions.
“It’s like, just survive,” Nguyen said. “Don’t try and thrive. Just make a good living and be a good person.”
She wants to respect her mother, who fled communist Vietnam for America several years after falling in love with an American G.I. during the war, but Nguyen also said she feels she’s in a position to use her voice to fight for a better future for Asians in America.
“It’s easier to kind of disappear and protect yourself than to be out there,” she said. “But again, things won’t change unless we’re out there.”
Madoka Koguchi, 28, Cafe Cà Phê’s manager, said many Asian immigrants historically have turned to opening small businesses to survive. The Cafe Cà Phê team, however, has an opportunity to take it a step further and use the shop as a means to educate while amplifying all voices.
Koguchi, who met Nguyen through the cast of “Miss Saigon,” moved from New York to Kansas City to help Nguyen pursue her dream. Koguchi and her husband wanted a job, a house and a dog.
She has no regrets.
Koguchi said she feels they’ve made more of an impact as baristas in Kansas City than they did as actors traveling the country.
‘A home for ALL people’
On a recent Tuesday, Nguyen worked from a small table near the counter, her 6-year-old Chihuahua, Daisy, on the ground beside her. A customer ordered the Saigon, a classic Vietnamese slow-dripped iced coffee with condensed milk.
A “Miss Saigon” sign lit up in yellow in the window behind her, reminiscent of Nguyen’s time with the Broadway production. A South Vietnam flag hung on the wall next to a colorful banner of a Vietnamese dragon and a poster that read “Vietnamese for Black Lives.”
Allyship is a cornerstone here.
Tina Turner’s voice capered from the speakers, and when a customer Nguyen knew walked in, she insisted that her drink was on the house.
A small group that came in for coffee admired the T-shirts and tote bags — 25% of the proceeds go toward funds that help the AAPI community, including the families of the Atlanta victims.
In Vietnam, coffee shops are made to feel like second homes, where visitors are treated more like family or friends than customers, Nguyen said. It’s that feeling she hopes to capture with Cafe Cà Phê.
Nguyen and her team recently started learning American Sign Language, which they’ve made a requirement for baristas.
“Cafe Cà Phê is a home for ALL people, especially those who feel marginalized and excluded — this sadly is the reality for our friends in the Deaf Community,” a recent post on Cafe Cà Phê’s Instagram feed read. “This community often doesn’t feel like people care, or can even *try* to communicate. We know how that feels. We want everyone who walks into our shop to feel loved. Like, really loved. And understood.”
Nguyen, though not from Kansas City, loves the communities and businesses that make it diverse, and she wants to see them thrive.
Earlier this year, Cafe Cà Phê held a series of pop-up events to support small, often minority, businesses in the metro. She spent a recent day off using part of her stimulus check to shop at other small shops.
“So much of my coffee shop’s mission is to diversify Kansas City,” Nguyen said. “And if I’m not out there getting to know the other small business owners, or even just the people, then I’m not really doing my coffee shop justice.”
An hour before Brian Roberts, the owner of the Black Pantry, opened his doors for the first time on April 8, Nguyen dropped by for a visit.
“We gotta bless this home,” she said, arms full of coffee and donuts, as well as a red envelope, a symbol of luck.
Roberts, like Nguyen, has lived in places that are more culturally diverse. Nguyen grew up in San Diego, and Roberts recently moved back to Kansas City from the Bay area.
When he settled back down in Kansas City, he couldn’t help but notice how segregated the city still is. The lack of minorities in certain spaces is obvious, he said, even as the city has expanded.
“The growth is extremely one-sided, and it was all intentional.”
But he believes Nguyen is part of some much-needed change.
“She’s real, she’s raw and she’s authentic, and I think that has allowed her to really expand,” Roberts said, adding that Nguyen has in a short time created a strong presence that’s opening doors for other minority groups.
The vigil was perhaps the most obvious example.
As Nguyen looked out at the hundreds of people gathered in front of her coffee shop, with it’s large colorful Vietnamese dragon painted on the wall behind her, she said Kansas City truly began to feel like home.
“America has done a really good job at making us Asians feel like ‘the other,’ haven’t they?” she had said to the crowd gathered the afternoon of March 28. “I’m tired of feeling like ‘the other.’”
Bety Le Shackelford, 34, Cafe Cà Phê’s director of community outreach, moved to Kansas City from New York in 2018. The vigil was the first time she’s seen that many Asian people gathered in one place since moving to the Midwest.
Shackelford watched as the business transformed into what Nguyen has dreamed of — a hub for community and learning.
“I think I misunderstood the impact of what my coffee shop was, and what my coffee shop became that day,” Nguyen said. “My intention was to spread awareness of the Asian narrative, but I didn’t intend to create a space with so much importance in someone’s life.”
The future of Cafe Cà Phê
Nguyen wonders if people are getting tired of her constant social media posts calling out racism, now that it’s no longer as “trendy” to post about the AAPI community.
“But I will keep doing it,” she said. “I don’t care if people are uncomfortable. Sorry.”
Come early summer, her team plans to find an outdoor space for a summer residency for the coffee truck. And by the end of the year, she hopes to have a brick and mortar space of her own.
She has bigger dreams, too — dreams of opening Cafe Cà Phês in other cities in the Midwest that lack representation; of creating a Little Asia in Kansas City with a museum, events and even classes on Asian culture. Maybe she’d teach how to make Vietnamese coffee.
Cafe Cà Phê is taking a month-long hiatus beginning May 16. Nguyen is going back to California, Koguchi is going back to Japan and Shackelford is due with her first child.
Nguyen worries that in that time, the community might start to forget again.
“There is still a long way to go, and it’s OK if you’re feeling overwhelmed or not well-informed when it comes to the Asian community or the Asian narrative,” Nguyen said, encouraging people to keep asking questions.
“I don’t want people to wait for another tragedy to happen to support us.”
