Intelligentsia Coffee. Bubble Tea. Frozen Yogurt.
Specialty Coffee and Espresso We source our specialty coffee directly from Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Chicago. Widely considered as one of the pioneers of “Third Wave Coffee”, a movement that elevated coffee harvesting, roasting, brewing and consumption to artisanal status, Intelligentsia works directly with its individual farms and producers to cultivate and develop unique and exclusive coffees with the belief that “human effort is the most critical factor in quality coffee”. The actual term Intelligentsia means a group of people aiming to disseminate culture. In this case Third Wave Coffee culture. Café Fresco is in line with this same goal – to spread the love and knowledge of great coffee all over Northwest Indiana. For us coffee is not just a light, medium, or dark roast. It’s not just from a nameless producer in Colombia or Brazil. It is from a farm owned by one Fabio Caballero in the Honduras or from the Shegole Cooperative in Ethiopia, or it is from wherever it is in season and harvested at its peak ripeness. All our coffee beans arrive the very next day after roasting and brewed per cup through the pour-over method or through the espresso machine to give you the best coffee and espresso drinks around. “The best is Chicago's Intelligentsia, which plucks the top 0.1 percent of beans. Its coffee has the complexity of a first-growth Bordeaux.” Bubble Tea Also known as pearl milk tea or boba tea, this unique and refreshing drink originated from Taiwan in the 1980s. Bubble tea consists of a tea base and is usually served cold with tapioca pearls, tea jelly, or other toppings giving a whole new dimension to your drink. Café Fresco’s bubble tea is a classic concoction of cold brew iced tea mixed with milk and chewy black tapioca pearls. Hot Chocolate Not hot cocoa (the powdered kind). Our hot chocolate base is made from the finest Belgian dark chocolate slowly melted with milk and cooked until rich and thick. Truly a decadent delight. Frozen Yogurt Café Fresco started off in the summer of 2013 as a frozen yogurt café, and although we’ve expanded our menu quite a bit to include hot drinks, froyo remains one of our most popular items with our vast array of flavors and toppings. Our flavors rotate every 2 days between 2 machines in the spring/summer and 1 in the fall/winter.
Hi, my name is Megan Alia, I own Cafe Fresco. We are at Cafe Breakfast and Lunch. You can see this is our restaurant normally. At this time, we would have lines up the door. You can see there's everybody here. Basically, our clientele is business people, which are now working from home. So that's been a huge impact on our business. We're probably down 57%. We have stayed open. I've kept all my employees. It's just devastating, You just don't know what's going to happen. Basically, we just want to work. I just want to work, pay our bills, pay my employees. Basically, in our community, everybody knows us. We have a lot of regular customers that have been coming here for years. We've been open since 2002. It's just very upsetting. You can see there's nobody here at lunch right now, basically no one. We have a back room now. I haven't opened since. . . Hey John, how are you? We haven't opened maybe three times since May. I'll show you that. I'll show you right here. Barstools fun. So with the money that's all I would use it for. I could try to pay the other bills myself. Again, you just want to. . . it never ends. You just want to move on. You just want to live your life and go to work. Just work. That's what we want to do. We want to go to work. And if you can do something fine, if not, thank you for everything you're doing for all these people that are well-deserved to get the money that they're trying to survive. Again, whatever you can do, we would appreciate it.
