For Andres Chavez, coffee is passion.
That passion has taken him all over the world and has now won him recognition from all over, including a music artist.
Chavez, who is a lifelong Odessan, has owned his local coffee business called Coffee Weirdo for about three years now.
“I love coffee so it was my goal to always open up a mobile trailer and serve coffee,” Chavez said. “It got to a point where I was doing coffee and crepes here locally.”
Now, he’s roasting coffee for multiplatinum Mexican-American singer Francisco Javier Bautista Jr., otherwise known as Frankie J who is launching his new coffee brand.
Frankie J grew up in San Diego, Calif. and became a freestyle artist under the stage name Frankie Boy in the late 1990s.
He is a former member of the musical group the Kumbia Kings.
The two hooked up on a live Instagram feed.
“I’ve followed him since I was young,” Chavez said. “I’ve been to several of his concerts. I commented and said ‘hey, we have some coffee and we’d love to send you some’ and he read the message and said yes. He gave us a shipping address and he loved it.”
Not only did the artist love it, but it just so happened that he had always dreamt of having his own coffee brand.
“He asked where I was from and I told him I lived in Texas,” Chavez said. “Well he was going to Houston to do some recording and asked if we could meet up and talk about it. I went to Houston and we went to a coffee house where we talked about a coffee brand.”
It was from there where everything started taking off.
After meeting with Frankie J last June, the two continued to communicate and discuss the brand.
“We started working from there,” Chavez said. “We put everything together as far as which coffee brands we were going to go with. We met up again in San Diego to discuss his cafecito sessions which, what he’s doing right now is.”
Frankie J’s cafecito sessions are basically a performance of an acoustic version of his music, held in a smaller venue than his other shows.
“Only about 100 people get to go to it and he’ll perform his greatest hits,” Chavez said. “To get into the sessions, you buy his bag of coffee. The first one was in San Diego and now he’s working on different cities to promote. So what I do, he ships the coffee to me….we’re doing different types of origins.”
So far, the feedback has been great from the first cafecito session.
“People loved the coffee,” Chavez said. “People loved the experience. During the show, you could do a Q and A with him. We sent some coffee to a podcast in New York City and they’re going to promote it as well. Now we’re getting ready to do a full-customed print design on the bags and we’re talking with some people to try and get his coffee into stores like Costco. Once we do the designs, we’re going to roast the coffee and go from there.”
While it’s still a work in progress, Chavez says he’s excited about the opportunity to work with Frankie J.
“Our plan is to continue to build the Mr. Cafecito brand,” Chavez said. “We’re partnered together. This is going to be something that we’ll launch that will hopefully turn into the first coffee shop with this brand.”
The next cafecito session will be in a few weeks.
Chavez used to work in graphic design.
But in 2017, he had a change of heart and because he had always loved coffee, he figured to venture into a new business.
“I did (graphic design) for an ex-relationship,” Chavez said. “But it wasn’t something I was passionate about. As I was pushing away from that business, I moved over to coffee.”
Not long after, he bought his coffee trailer and espresso machine.
To purchase his first espresso machine, he had to travel all the way to Florida and bring it back, only to find out it didn’t work at first.
“It turns out it was too good to be true because they sold me a broken machine,” Chavez said. “But then I found a repair shop in Austin and took it there to get it fixed.”
From there, he flew to Mexico City to learn how to make coffee and crepes.
“A local chef taught me how to make crepes and a local coffee shop taught me how to make the coffee and gave me a few lessons,” Chavez said.
His unique flavor is a Hawaiian-style coffee which uses hand-harvest, roasted beans from the island.
Since then, he’s gone all over the country, selling his brand of coffee.
The recognition has been good for his business and Chavez says he’s eager to continue to work with Frankie J.
“The recognition has been great,” Chavez said. “It almost seems so random with how this all happened. If two people love coffee, regardless of where they’re from, if they love coffee then there’s going to be some kind of relationship.”
For more information about Chavez and his business, go to tinyurl.com/3jamem2t.
