We had the good fortune of connecting with Kathleen and David Aragon and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kathleen and David, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
My husband and I saw the coffee house building in San Luis closed for a few years and it kept coming to my thoughts that it could be so good for the community to buy the building and open a new coffee house.

What should our readers know about your business?
My husband, David is a native of San Luis and we love the town, the people and the surrounding area. So opening the San Luis Coffee Company on January 20, 2023 in this very rural town seemed a good fit.. The closest traffic light is 50 miles away.

San Luis is the “oldest town in Colorado”. Our coffee house is right across the street from the iconic, internationally known, Shrine of the Stations of the Cross. We are also on Highway 159 and it’s a beautiful scenic way to drive from Denver to Taos or Santa Fe.

San Luis is part of the most impoverished county in Colorado. So we are very excited to create jobs to boost work force development and contribute to economic development in town.

We plan to grow from ‘our coffee house into manufacturing our freshly roasted bagged coffee beans and distributing online to people who can’t make it to San Luis.

Part of our plan is also to open a non-profit branch to help other non-profit businesses, in addition to distributing wholesale to hotels, grocery stores, restaurants, educational facilities and various government entities. We’d like to serve our coffee to the joy and benefit of as many people on earth as possible, lol. A percentage of our sales goes to provide education for indigenous children.

Our hope is to be able to hire 15 people or more.

It’s been a lot of learning, researching, connecting with people, trial and error, figuring out what works and what doesn’t and it’s given me great satisfaction and joy, and of course there’s been some challenges along the way. It’s all part of the journey. (Along with a few more gray hairs.)

We bought all of the equipment we needed and one of the pieces is an electric coffee roaster, so our beans are fresh and that allows us to serve the best darn cup of coffee. We love that the electric coffee roaster has minimal emissions and is easy on our beautiful mother earth.

We are very focused on health promoting and earth friendly, sustainable products in our buying and supplying! Our beautiful Humans and Earth are very important to us.

We buy our beans from sustainably sourced farms near the equator, proudly paying a fair living wage.
We purchase other products that are as organic as possible and our paper products are made in an earth friendly, compostable manner.

We provide a place for local artists to display their work, which is a win for us because we get to enjoy all of these gorgeous pieces hanging on the walls while sharing them with our satisfied customers.

Oh and did I tell you our dining room floor is made of pennies with a few dimes scattered in. It’s really something to see!

It’s been a delight to serve a cup of our freshly brewed premium coffee and our delicious home-made pastries and panini sandwiches to travelers on their way from one place to another as they drive through town as well as those who live in the
San Luis area.

We believe in community and providing a place to bring people together, while creating jobs!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The Shrine at the top of the mesa. ‘The Stations of the Cross path that leads up the mesa to the Chapel.
The path beyond the chapel that winds further up the mesa with Spanish martyrs.

The Sand Dunes half an hour away.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Susan Sanderford, the Town Manager of San Luis, was so encouraging of our ideas for getting the coffee house going and in heading us in the right direction for the town, county and state licenses and paper work we needed to complete. and since we’ve opened she has been a loyal customer.

Website: www.sanluiscoffeecompany.com

Instagram: San Luis Coffee Company

Facebook: San Luis Coffee Company

Yelp: San Luis Coffee Company

Image Credits
Christina Robben from Robben Marketing Solutions in pueblo Colorado

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