Chelsey Solemsaas, left, making coffee at her new shop with co-owner Hannah Cambronero-Belgarde. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Chelsey Solemsaas and Hannah Cambronero-Belgarde are bringing their green and purple lattes to RiNo.
“We combine Filipino flavors with Americans’ love of coffee,” Solemsaas said.
The duo opened Coffee Sarap in at 3460 Larimer St. a month ago. The 1,500-square-foot cafe brought around $10,000 a week in sales over its first few weeks, Solemsaas said. The menu incorporates ube, a sweet purple yam, and pandan, a tropical green plant which has a vanilla-like taste.
Most drinks cost between $5 to $7; the business is open Tuesday through Sunday from 7 or 8 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. Patrons can also purchase coffee “flights” for $22 and try an assortment of its flavors.
The founders said the neighborhood has been supportive of the nascent business. Others come from farther away, having tried the coffee when the duo were serving its drinks out of a cart for the past three years.
“We did not think we were going to be in Denver, because she [Cambronero-Belgarde] lives in Aurora, I live in Castle Rock … But our broker found this spot. It was a second-gen coffee shop in the RiNo district. And we looked at and we’re like: we can’t pass this up,” Solemsaas said.
Logan Schenk of The Zall Co. helped the duo land the cafe in RiNo, which was formerly home to Lekker Coffee.
But brick-and-mortar life isn’t easy. The cafe’s owners are in search of a distributor for some of their products, as the two buy most of the business’ products themselves, going to Costco “almost everyday.”
“We get a lot of our ube, pandan from Amazon, but when it comes to the more niche things, like calamansi, which is like a Filipino lemon/lime, we go to a local market,” Solemsaas said.
“We’re used to the food truck life, where you’re open for like, four hours, you make enough for that day … but the volume that we have to do now, we have to think bigger … maybe we do need to find distributors, but right now we’re still the ones going to the local market,” she added.
The money has also come largely from Solemsaas and her partner Cambronero-Belgarde. Its only debt is from a $30,000 loan from the Colorado Enterprise Fund, which provides more flexible lending terms than traditional banks.
It definitely helps that the business’ previous iteration was a cash cow. Last year, the business owners achieved roughly $75,000 in sales using just a coffee cart. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing the whole way.
“There are times we could pay ourselves, there are times we’re fronting our own money,” Solemsaas said.
The two started Coffee Sarap in 2022, converting a $5,000 hot dog cart into a mobile coffee business. It started by parking outside of a wine bar in Castle Rock. Then it went to farmers markets. Soon it was at festivals, schools and private events.
But at its core, the business is a celebration of Filipino culture, something integral to the lives of its owners. Solemsaas and Cambronero-Belgarde – both 33 – grew up in a small town outside of Seattle. Both of them are half Filipino.
“We had Filipino food every single night, every morning … but then when we go to school, the demographic did not reflect that,” Solemsaas said.
And when she moved to Colorado in 2018, she noticed something similar. She reconnected with Cambronero-Belgarde, who had moved out of their hometown when the two were younger but ended up in the Centennial State in 2019. Both “were both stay-at-home parents” and “wanted to get back into the workforce.” The pair had previously been baristas in their teens and twenties.
“That was one thing in Seattle we really missed when we moved out here. We noticed there was a lack of just Filipino flavors in general … so we’re like, we need to do something.”
Roughly 40,000 Filipinos live in Colorado. Seattle, by comparison has 115,000, the ninth-most for a city in America.
And when it came time to name their new business, Solemsaas said they chose to incorporate the word “Sarap,” which means “delicious” in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.
“Filipinos are known for being communal: come into my house, eat, we’ll cook for you …stay, talk. We wanted that essence when you walk into this shop.”
Chelsey Solemsaas, left, making coffee at her new shop with co-owner Hannah Cambronero-Belgarde. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Chelsey Solemsaas and Hannah Cambronero-Belgarde are bringing their green and purple lattes to RiNo.
“We combine Filipino flavors with Americans’ love of coffee,” Solemsaas said.
The duo opened Coffee Sarap in at 3460 Larimer St. a month ago. The 1,500-square-foot cafe brought around $10,000 a week in sales over its first few weeks, Solemsaas said. The menu incorporates ube, a sweet purple yam, and pandan, a tropical green plant which has a vanilla-like taste.
Most drinks cost between $5 to $7; the business is open Tuesday through Sunday from 7 or 8 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. Patrons can also purchase coffee “flights” for $22 and try an assortment of its flavors.
The founders said the neighborhood has been supportive of the nascent business. Others come from farther away, having tried the coffee when the duo were serving its drinks out of a cart for the past three years.
“We did not think we were going to be in Denver, because she [Cambronero-Belgarde] lives in Aurora, I live in Castle Rock … But our broker found this spot. It was a second-gen coffee shop in the RiNo district. And we looked at and we’re like: we can’t pass this up,” Solemsaas said.
Logan Schenk of The Zall Co. helped the duo land the cafe in RiNo, which was formerly home to Lekker Coffee.
But brick-and-mortar life isn’t easy. The cafe’s owners are in search of a distributor for some of their products, as the two buy most of the business’ products themselves, going to Costco “almost everyday.”
“We get a lot of our ube, pandan from Amazon, but when it comes to the more niche things, like calamansi, which is like a Filipino lemon/lime, we go to a local market,” Solemsaas said.
“We’re used to the food truck life, where you’re open for like, four hours, you make enough for that day … but the volume that we have to do now, we have to think bigger … maybe we do need to find distributors, but right now we’re still the ones going to the local market,” she added.
The money has also come largely from Solemsaas and her partner Cambronero-Belgarde. Its only debt is from a $30,000 loan from the Colorado Enterprise Fund, which provides more flexible lending terms than traditional banks.
It definitely helps that the business’ previous iteration was a cash cow. Last year, the business owners achieved roughly $75,000 in sales using just a coffee cart. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing the whole way.
“There are times we could pay ourselves, there are times we’re fronting our own money,” Solemsaas said.
The two started Coffee Sarap in 2022, converting a $5,000 hot dog cart into a mobile coffee business. It started by parking outside of a wine bar in Castle Rock. Then it went to farmers markets. Soon it was at festivals, schools and private events.
But at its core, the business is a celebration of Filipino culture, something integral to the lives of its owners. Solemsaas and Cambronero-Belgarde – both 33 – grew up in a small town outside of Seattle. Both of them are half Filipino.
“We had Filipino food every single night, every morning … but then when we go to school, the demographic did not reflect that,” Solemsaas said.
And when she moved to Colorado in 2018, she noticed something similar. She reconnected with Cambronero-Belgarde, who had moved out of their hometown when the two were younger but ended up in the Centennial State in 2019. Both “were both stay-at-home parents” and “wanted to get back into the workforce.” The pair had previously been baristas in their teens and twenties.
“That was one thing in Seattle we really missed when we moved out here. We noticed there was a lack of just Filipino flavors in general … so we’re like, we need to do something.”
Roughly 40,000 Filipinos live in Colorado. Seattle, by comparison has 115,000, the ninth-most for a city in America.
And when it came time to name their new business, Solemsaas said they chose to incorporate the word “Sarap,” which means “delicious” in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.
“Filipinos are known for being communal: come into my house, eat, we’ll cook for you …stay, talk. We wanted that essence when you walk into this shop.”
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