The Pressures Of The Small Coffee Biz: 'I Feel Like Capitalism Is Killing Us'

Areli Barrera Grodski started out with $75 and has grown her business exponentially, but the Latina shares her many challenges, from representation to racism.

In 2010, Areli Barrera Grodski and her husband, Leon, started their coffee company Cocoa Cinnamon in her mother’s kitchen in the North Carolina mountains. A year later, they moved to Durham, and briefly sold coffee from a tricycle. Two years later, they opened the first of three brick-and-mortar cafes. In 2017, they founded their roastery, Little Waves, inside the third shop. Areli is one of a handful of Latinas who owns coffee cafes and roasts coffee. She was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and immigrated with her parents to San Antonio when she was 6 years old. The family eventually settled in Cherokee, North Carolina, rife with Indigenous people (and racist tourists), and her entrepreneurial parents opened up gift shops. For this edition of Voices in Food, Areli told Garin Pirnia about her upbringing, how coffee can be a catalyst for change and how representation matters.

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