Openings & Closings

Latin American coffee shop opening another Kansas City area location. Here’s what’s new

A cinnamon Café Corazón logo is featured on a Dulce De Leche latte in the Crossroads Arts District on Feb. 10, 2022.
A cinnamon Café Corazón logo is featured on a Dulce De Leche latte in the Crossroads Arts District on Feb. 10, 2022. ecuriel@kcstar.com

Café Corazón — a Latin American coffee shop that started in Westport in 2019 — is gearing up to open its third location.

The coffee shop’s newest location will be at 5911 Main St., in Brookside. It’s expected to open in January 2025, said owner Miel Castagna-Herrera.

She said she’s looking forward to bringing a “different take” on coffee to the area. Her shop offers lattes, as well as yerba mate, house-made horchata, empanadas and more Latin American treats.

Castagna-Herrera’s father is from Argentina. Her husband, Curtis Herrera, is Mexican and Native American.

One of the shop’s goals is to celebrate Latin American cultures while exposing Kansas Citians to new cuisines. While Castagna-Herrera admitted that it would be nice to one day open a spot in her home state of New Mexico, she’s enjoying meeting new customers in her current home.

“Right now we’re just focused on being here in Kansas City and trying to kind of enrich the cultural landscape a little bit,” she said.

Café Corazón’s original location is at 1721 Westport Road. Its second opened in the Crossroads at 110 Southwest Blvd. in 2022.

The Westport location has more nods to Herrera’s Mexican side, and the Crossroads more to his Native American influences. So the new spot, Castagna-Herrera said, will lean into her Argentine culture.

It will serve a merienda, or midday meal involving sandwiches, pastries, tea, coffee and more.

Castagna-Herrera hopes to introduce a new demographic of Kansas Citians to Café Corazón.

“It’s super close to the Plaza and all that,” she said. “We just felt like it was time to go to a different area and give it a shot.”

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Jenna Thompson
The Kansas City Star
Jenna Thompson covers retail news for The Kansas City Star. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, she previously reported for the Lincoln Journal Star and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she studied journalism and English.
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