Earlier this month, La Finca Coffee House celebrated its 7th anniversary as a family business in St. Francis.
Janeth and Lizeth Zorrilla are the sisters behind the Mexican-inspired coffee shop. They opened their business in 2017, sourcing coffee beans from their grandfather’s farm in Oaxaca, Mexico.
On top of celebrating a 7-year milestone, they recently earned a $10,000 grant from BMO’s Celebrating Women Grant Program.
Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez visited the Zorrilla sisters at their coffee shop to talk about what inspired them to open La Finca and how the grant will help them grow their business.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
For people who aren't familiar with La Finca, can you tell me a bit about your back story, and why you both decided to open this coffee shop?
Lizeth: So the biggest and most important part of our story is that we were raised undocumented in the United States. I came over here when I was three, turning four years old, and [Janeth] was one year old. I wanted to create something with my sister that not only highlighted our culture, but represented our family in a certain way, so that we could get roots here, which felt kind of complicated at the time — to establish roots in a country that didn't want us.
So in 2012, we were granted DACA, which was amazing. In 2016, we decided to apply for Advance Parole, which sounds really crazy and scary. It was at a time when nobody was really doing it. It had just kind of rolled out — Advance Parole basically gave us a sheet of paper that said, ‘Yes, you can leave the United States for X amount of time, and we guarantee that you will be allowed back in.’
So when we traveled to Oaxaca to meet my dad's side of the family, the three weeks were amazing and emotional. I remember flying in with [Janeth], and we're holding hands, and I couldn’t stop crying because it felt like home in a place that was so foreign to me. We got to meet our grandparents, our great aunts, cousins, everybody in that short time frame.
On that trip, our grandfather put coffee bags into our suitcases, and he said, 'Just try it.' Every evening, it was, ‘Let's sit down and talk about our day over a cup of coffee.’ It was always in a little tacita, a traditional [ceramic mug] of Oaxaca. And we loved that storytelling; we loved being able to just decompress after a day.
We wanted that connection that we felt [in Oaxaca]. So coming back, I started sharing that coffee. I myself don’t drink coffee, but I started learning how to make a pour-over. I started infusing different flavors to try while connecting us back to Mexico.
We really mapped out the roles that our family would fit in, because we knew we wanted to involve them. You know, this was for them. So my dad helps us with the ordering process and my mom's recipes are everything we do. But that was the beginning of it, and we learned a lot. I think our business plan really helped us stay focused to continue our path to growing what we have seven years later.
Where does the name La Finca come from?
Janeth: So La Finca comes from when we were younger, we always knew that my grandfather owned a coffee farm in Oaxaca. The farm has been in the family for about five generations. We've heard so many stories about when my dad was younger, being raised there and working on the farm, but we never knew what the farm was called. We just called it La Finca. So when we started thinking and workshopping ideas for our [coffee shop], that one just kind of stuck out, because it's what we always called grandpa's farm, and that's where we're sourcing all of our coffee from. So it just felt natural to call it La Finca.
I also want to mention the location of your coffee shop. It isn't something that people might easily stumble upon. How did you guys decide on opening the coffee shop here?
Lizeth: So I saw an ad for it the day the previous coffee shop closed, and that same day, I drove out here. I’m familiar with the area because we went to high school at St. Thomas More. I'm looking around, and I love the lake views. We already knew we would bring our mugs, so we were like, ‘Can you imagine people sitting here enjoying a cafecito and making this look more like what we miss?’
So when we made the business plan, it was revolving around this, and it was difficult. We wouldn't have had the same foot traffic had we gone somewhere on the South Side. So that was a challenge: Can we bring our people here? We sat down, we had that conversation, and we decided, let's take that risk and try to see who's going to come out to this little part of town. For me, specifically, being able to see the amount of Black and brown people who come to this side of town, I think that was probably the most important factor for me — to be able to draw a crowd that creates diversity in this neighborhood, because Milwaukee is so segregated, and that needs to change.
You both recently earned a $10,000 grant from BMO’s 2024 Celebrating Women Grant Program. What inspired you to apply for this grant?
It was a three-part application process. The first part was just answering questions about the business, where we see ourselves in the future, and how a grant like this is going to be beneficial to our business. We met all the criteria for this grant, which is not always easy, given our mixed legal status. Once we passed the first round, there was a video submission, which made us a little nervous because we're both camera shy. After that, they announced the winners, and we were insanely… we were floored! I wanted to apply just because it was a good opportunity, but I had no expectation of winning, so it's going to be huge for our business.
We started roasting in-house this year. We started a partnership with Bellwether Roasters, which allows us to literally roast in-house, and we're hoping to use a majority of the grant to expand that part.
We want to start offering coffee as a retail option for our customers and a wholesale option for any neighboring cafes or restaurants that want to carry our coffee. So it's a big project that's completely new to us, and we are fortunate enough to have help from BMO to see that through and help it grow.
Before we wrap up, I want to go back to something that you both mentioned earlier. How have you seen your business create community over the past seven years since you originally set out to do that?
Janeth: Something very important that Lizeth touched on was promoting diversity in our community. It's evident when you walk into the shop how much diversity there is, and it's a point of pride for us to be able to say that it's because they're coming here. They're coming to La Finca to get some coffee and chat with friends. I think that's one of the biggest ways we've seen the community grow throughout the seven years we've been here.
But outside of that, there have been numerous partnerships that we've been able to make along the way and encourage growth between not just other businesses, but entrepreneurs in the area. Some good friends of ours that own the Cuatro Uno Cuatro brand in Milwaukee—we partner with them a few times a year to put together something called the Mercadito, where we host 15 or so entrepreneurs to come and sell their goods here. So we're opening our doors to other businesses in the area to come and share their products, share their stories, and collaborate so that they get to share that with our community here. Those are probably some of my favorite ways we've seen the community grow here.
