Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Robert Encarnacion now calls Detroit’s West Village home and wants to bring a taste of Latin American coffee, food, and culture into the neighborhood.
The owner plans to open a coffee shop called “Encarnacion” in the next few weeks and then launch a Latin street food cantina in the same building shortly after.
“I want to be able to bring some of the food staples that we have, that are casual bites, that you can find in any streets of the countries that we come from – the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela,” he says. “And our coffee beans are going to be strictly Latin American.”
Initially, he says he didn’t plan to name the coffee shop after himself, but one day he stumbled upon the definition of his last name “Encarnacion,” which he says means “a spiritual being taking the shape of a human,” and felt that it resonated with people’s relationship to coffee, which wakes you up and makes you feel alive.
He claims he was not a coffee drinker at all until he went back to college in 2014 and says he needed it to get through school and “being an adult.” Living in Miami at the time, he fell in love with Cuban cortaditos.
In July 2019, Encarnacion moved to Detroit, partially because of his work flipping houses, and found a home in West Village a few months later.
During the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to take a class on how to make latte art using a French press, which is when the idea of opening a coffee shop first sparked. Now, he has built up a small following on Encarnacion’s Instagram page showing his time learning about the art of coffee making.
In April 2021, Encarnacion purchased a building at 8016 Kercheval Ave., but the journey to actually opening the cafe’s doors has been difficult, which the owner says has mainly been due to an increase in costs because of inflation.
“We have been pretty much self-funded and it has been quite of a ride since we purchased our own building,” he says.
Finally, now, most of the necessities for the space have been sorted out, apart from an elevator to make it accessible and a kitchen hood, which he says he should be able to get in the coming months.
“Our space is going to be a dual concept. We’re going to have two countertops, two POS systems, one is going to be the coffee shop and the other one is going to be the cantina,” Encarnacion says. “There are going to be some visual differences there, so you might feel like you are in two separate places depending on where you sit.”
Encarnacion hopes for the inside of the shop to have an intimate, cozy atmosphere, mixing West Village’s “vintage-ness” with modern design.
Encarnacion says he moved to Detroit from Miami because he felt the city had a “window of opportunities,” with lower costs. He still feels that way and says he often complains to local Detroiters that city residents aren’t taking advantage of investing in their hometown.
“I think Detroit is a bag full of opportunities,” he says. “We have probably 10 years worth of opportunities to just lose the fear and go and I’m super excited with what’s happening as far as the investment infrastructure. I think Detroit, for those who are willing to give it a chance, is going to be a very rewarding city.”
While Encarnacion acknowledges that outside investors can push out Detroit residents, he thinks that Detroiters should be investing in their own city to help allow the people who have grown up here to stay.
“I’ve seen it myself because I’ve seen how the West Village has changed,” he says. “A lot of [Detroit residents] I understand are going through a very rough period of time, but what we need to do as locals is be very vocal about it. I do believe that unfortunately a lot of people are going to be pushed out, but if people lose fear and start investing in their own neighborhoods, I think we’re going to be able to keep the majority of the people that have grown up in those neighborhoods. But if they don’t, somebody else is going to do it and, unfortunately, displacement is gonna happen.”
Working as a banker for Bank of America until a year ago, Encarnacion says he handled local small business clients and “has gotten to know a lot of people in Detroit” who he feels could afford to invest.
“There’s a lot of people making these middle-class salaries in the city of Detroit but they’re still not investing in their neighborhoods. They’re actually discriminating on their own neighborhoods,” he says. “They’re looking to go to the suburbs, which was surprising to me that you would prefer just to go to the suburbs, and that was a lot of people. I’m telling you a lot of the people that could actually stay put and bring a lot more value in, they’re just choosing not to, and then people from outside come in and buy into these new opportunities.”
He adds, “But again, it’s a complex situation.”
When it comes to the coffee shop though, Encarnacion says his team is focused on offering unique products and staple Latin food items at an affordable price. He says he is super excited that the city approved an outdoor patio for the space, as it will increase seating and allow for occasional live Latin music performances.
“The idea behind that is to bring culture and folklore from Latin American countries into the West Village, and I think every place on Earth needs a little bit of that mixture,” he says.
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