Inside the Adelitas Coffee Co. cafe in downtown Wichita, Kansas. All images courtesy of Adelitas Coffee Co.
Succeeding in specialty coffee requires a fighting spirit, with battles big and small to be fought on a daily basis. For seasoned roaster and father of five girls Oscar Pineda in Wichita, Kansas, the spirit is embodied in las adelitas — a.k.a. soldaderas — the storied women who fought in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).
After launching Esperanza Coffee Roasters in 2021, Pineda and his wife Flor then opened the first Las Adelitas cafe in downtown Wichita in 2023 and doubled its size in late 2024. Pineda and family recently opened a new roastery with a small tasting room forthcoming inside Revolutsia on Central Ave.
With the latest opening, the Esperanza and Las Adelitas brands have come together under the name Adelitas Coffee Co. reflecting the dynamics of the family business — in which the two oldest girls, Yoselin and Brisa, now chip in — as well as its intense focus on coffees from Mexico.
“Most of the cafes or roasters here are owned by the majority-white population or by big coffee chains,” Pineda recently told Daily Coffee News. “We are pushing to experience specialty coffee and culture. We want our customers to understand not just specialty coffee but what coffee is — that it can be enjoyable without creamer. That it is full of flavors, culture and tradition.”
Oscar Pineda.
Inside the Adelitas Coffee Co. downtown cafe, single-origin coffees and blends — including some from other Latin American coffee-producing countries — are featured in drinks like horchata lattes, and mazapán lattes.
“Our whole menu is inspired by our Mexican-Latino roots,” Pineda said. “We are an immigrant family. We work in our cafe [and] roastery, and we attend to our customers personally. And we have passion, dedication and a dream.”
Pineda’s dream in coffee has been a long time in the making. Born in Michoacán, Pineda was brought to the United States at the age of six and raised by his grandparents.
After high school, Pineda went to work for the Wichita full-service coffee company Roaster Joe’s — now part of Premier Food Service — stocking warehouse shelves, cleaning, packing and bottling water jugs. Through 10 years, Pineda worked his way up to the position of roast master. In 2017, Pineda joined Wichita specialty coffee roasting company Reverie Coffee Roasters, working his way up to director of coffee.
After those 16 years learning all the ins and outs of production, Pineda launched Esperanza Coffee Roasters, focusing on the concept of hope.
“I had and have a hope to build something for my family, leaving them a sort of legacy,” Pineda said. “But also something for our underserved communities — having a place where they could gather and experience something different, and also maybe a coffee from their home country and creating those memories from home.”
For Mexican coffees, Las Adelitas is sourcing from regions including Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Nayarit and Guerrero.
In the approximately 1,300-square-foot downtown cafe, coffees make their way to a 3-group La Marzocco PB espresso machine or a Wilbur Curtis G4 Twin batch brewer, with support from numerous Mahlkönig K30 and EK43 grinders.
The downtown location.
The new 600-square-foot roastery and tasting room location, which opened in March, currently includes Lelit Bianca V3 Dual Boiler PID espresso machines, a Mahlkonig K30 and a Wilbur Curtis batch brewer and manual pourovers aided by Timemore scales.
Pineda said he’s hoping the new location can become something of an incubator for community engagement in coffee, with potential community events and professional training programs in the works.
“The new location’s neighborhood is a little more challenging since we are next to three other large coffee chains,” Pineda said. “We will continue to try and educate the community about coffee and the importance of knowing where the coffee is coming from, who’s growing it, and how customers impact things when they support our business — not just us, but the coffee communities we partner with.”
A mural at the downtown shop.
For Pineda and the women on the front lines of Adelitas Coffee Co., coffee truly has had a revolutionary impact.
“Coffee has brought me hope along my life journey,” Pineda said. “It has brought me opportunities that I would have never thought I would have as an immigrant and one of the so-called Dreamers.”
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Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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