004 | 100 Saul
100 Strangers Project
I was scrolling through Instagram one day and stumbled upon a friend’s post about a mobile coffee shop on wheels called Casita Coffee. I was intrigued by the concept of a coffee shop that can essentially come to you, and I was especially interested when I saw that the owner, Saul, was pulling inspiration from his Mexican heritage for his menu and house-made syrups.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks later when I saw that Casita was posted up in Downtown Gilbert. My sister and I made our way down and ordered an insane amount of caffeine (for two people). The drinks were delicious…. all of them. We had the chance to chat with Saul about the coffee industry, the beans he prefers to use for espresso, and his process for creating his own recipes. Everything about Casita Coffee feels custom and from of the heart. Custom and from the heart just so happen to be my favorite combo.
Saul 004 | 100
Q&A
Rick: Tell me about your go-to coffee drink at the moment
Saul: My go-to coffee that I try at a new place is always the “what do you recommend”, and the first drink they mention is what I get. I’m not much of an at home coffee drinker since I drink lots of it at the shop, but my wife does and she asks for a oat milk latte with 3 shots.
Rick: How did your coffee obsession start?
Saul: A coworker offered me Cuban coffee… it’s just espresso and sugar. It got me hooked. So then I bought a little $60 machine to make espresso at home. I started watching videos and eventually upgraded my machine because I wanted to make latte art.
Rick: What machine did you upgrade to for the latte art?
Saul: I use the Barista Express by Breville. Some of the early pictures you see on my Instagram are made with that machine.
Rick: How important is the gear you use?
Saul: People think, “You have 15K machine… It does everything for you.” But what they don’t see is all of the behind the scenes… how many grams of coffee go in vs how many grams come out… there’s a certain amount of time that everything has to happen or else it tastes sour or it tastes bitter. I mean, you can make a very bad cup of coffee on a very good espresso machine, but I can make you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had on my home machine. When I got that $60 machine I kept getting hooked to the science behind all of this. I have to mess with this machine every morning to get it where I want it to be. People don’t see that. They just see me pulling shots, but my skill is the most important thing because it gets used the most. I feel like I’ll never stop learning.
Rick: Tell me about your origin story.
Saul: I’m one of 5 kids raised by an immigrant single mom. I’m right in the middle... two older and two younger. I wouldn’t say I was a trouble-maker. I was just growing up in extreme poverty. Under certain circumstances I even worked in the fields picking lettuce while I was in high school.
Saul would go on to tell me that he didn’t finish high school. And right around that time was when he met his wife, Ana. She was getting ready to leave Yuma and go study at ASU. However, the long distance proved to be too much so he followed her out there. During that time that Saul ended up working towards his GED, enrolling in college, and going on to earn a degree in Criminal Justice from ASU. He landed himself a job in the financial crimes department of a major bank, but he says it just wasn’t for him.
Saul: I’m more of a hands-on, doing things outside kind of a person. Everything here is built from scratch. I’m not a cubicle kind of person. I wore a suit and tie everyday back then… it just wasn’t me.
Rick: Speaking of making things from scratch, you make all the syrups for your signature recipes. What’s the most popular drink?
Saul: The horchata latte is the most popular. We make it from scratch and it’s my grandmother’s recipe.
Rick: What do you like most about what you’re doing now?
Saul: I get to meet new people everyday. You never know what kind of stories are going to show up at that window. Sometimes it’s just hi, bye, thank you. Other times I get to be a therapist and people tell me their whole life story.
Rick: Here’s a time machine, but it’s stuck in reverse. So you can only go back in time, and once you set the date, that’s it! That’s the only day you can visit. You can travel back and forth between that date and the present as many times as you want. What day do you set and why?
Saul: I would go back to the day we were told we could take our first born home. After 34 long days in the NICU he was allowed to come home with us. We spent every single day and hour in that hospital just watching his progress. We would sleep in the waiting area, chairs, and sometimes rooms… only to get kicked out in the middle of the night because they needed to prep the room. Along those 34 days we saw and cherished every single milestone, from no more breathing machines, feeding tubes, to him drinking on his own without dropping his oxygen levels. So on day 34 when we heard, “Get the car seat ready he’s going home.” That’s a day and feeling that I already travel back and forth every time I look at him.
Saul and Ana love to travel and have always been devoted to discovering and supporting local coffee shops wherever they go. They savor the opportunity to sit and soak in the moment at all these different cafes. It’s this love for coffee shop culture that inspired the Casita Coffee experience.
Having never worked a single day in a coffee shop before opening his own, I find Saul’s story even more inspiring. I understand there’s a lot of practice and hard work that goes on behind the scenes before you get to work the farmer’s markets. But at some point there has to be that “I can do this” moment. I tip my hat to anyone that can gather the courage and commitment to follow through on those aspirations.
Awesome article. Get wired and shoot more film haha. Along with the Leica Q of course haha