Do you ever crave a cafe de olla, the spiced coffee they make in the pueblos in Mexico? Look no further. A trip to Alba Coffee on Michigan Ave has just the thing to satisfy your antojo.
Of course, Alba offers cappuccinos, espressos, and americanos, but owner David Valdez added Mexican coffee to reflect his identity.
“My Latinoness is gonna come out, even if I try to hide it,” Valdez said. “Of course, I’m gonna put out flavors like cafe de olla, piloncillo, and Mexican mochas. It’s good. And I think it’s cool because it’s exposing people to these different flavors.”
His love of Mexico also comes out in the homemade baked goods sold at Alba. In addition to having gluten-free and vegan options, he also works with a local Mexican baker, Mikaela Zamarron to experiment with putting a new twist on old favorites like the concha, a sweet bread commonly found in Mexican bakeries.
“I was like, what can we do to make the concha a little bit more appealing or different? I suggested that it would be cool to make a matcha concha or a new flavor, not just chocolate vanilla. And she’s like, yo, I would love to do that,” Valdez said. “And so she came up with a concha de mole. So good.”
Born In Mexico and raised in California, Valdez has always been drawn to coffee. It’s part of his deep connection to the land. He says he thinks a lot about coffee’s intricate journey from cultivation to becoming a beverage.
“My dad worked as a campesino; agriculture is in our sangre. Coffee is grown in Mexico, Guatemala, and South America. This product comes from those lands, and I saw it as a way to reconnect with that.” Valdez said. “People forget how many hands go into producing a commodity. From the growers to the people that pick the beans, the people that process it, bag it and send it to roast, to the people who serve it.”
Valdez has worked in the coffee business since high school in Occidental, a small town in Northern California. As an adult, he moved to San Francisco and basked in the vibrant coffee scene there. In 2017, Valdez moved to Motown. He lived in Southwest Detroit, where he could walk to work at Astro Coffee in Corktown. From there, he worked at Ochre Bakery in Core City and later at Milwaukee Caffé in the Milwaukee-Junction neighborhood, where he was a manager.
That’s where he met his future business partner, Carlos Liburdi, owner of Kiesling and Milwaukee Caffé. After years of working for others, for Valdez, becoming an entrepreneur and opening his own cafe was a logical next step.
Alba, which means “daybreak” in Spanish, opened its doors one year ago at 2124 Michigan Ave in Detroit with$175,000 in capital from loans and a grant from Michigan Central.
Valdez knew the first year of operating Alba was crucial for its long-term success. Despite the risks, Valdez fulfilled his vision for a warm, inclusive coffee house. He attributes his success to being in a neighborhood where community members stop in regularly for a cup of coffee and experiment with ways to attract new customers and get people in the door.
“We did this thing during the month of Ramadan where we would stay open late every Friday, and we would have food, and we would just stay open till midnight just gonna test it out. But it was huge.”
James Allen, a customer and local DJ, came up with another idea: creating a sober space. He proposed performing DJ sets while people drank coffee.
“In October, November, and December, Allen and his DJ friends would come in and spin. We don’t have a place in the city where we could listen to music that wasn’t a bar or a restaurant,” Valdez said.
Lately, he says he’s been thinking about ways to open Alba to the community for meetings. “I always thought it would be cool to have a coffee shop that’s open late and that has space for other non-profit groups.”
Attorney Gabriel Guerrero lives just a few blocks from Alba in the Hubbard Richard neighborhood. He says he stops in regularly to get a latte. He likes the idea of supporting a fellow Latino.
It’s always a great way to start my day as I head downtown from Southwest,” Guerrero said. “I’m delighted to see a Mexicano invested in this community.”
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Martina Guzmán is an award-winning journalist and the director of the Race & Justice Reporting Initiative at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School.
This story was made possible by the Race and Justice Reporting Initiative, which aims to build trust between the news media and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities and strengthen representative democracy. Funding for the initiative has been provided by a generous grant from Press Forward.
