After being inspired by a business class at Cabrillo College, Watsonville native Salvador Murillo put his skills and knowledge to the test with a mobile coffee and food truck business he has named Cafécto.
Now in operation for a year, he serves his hot and cold drinks and food on a regular schedule around Watsonville and is building a reputation among area students, business folks and passersby.
“The idea was to bring a bit of Latin-inspired coffee to a town that needed something like this,” Murillo said as a file of students on their lunch break lined up at his truck. “It started as a college project after they kept bringing up the idea of a coffee shop. My family has been doing hospitality for over 25 years around the area; I have family members who have done catering and food trucks. But I didn’t want to do ‘food heavy’ — I wanted to focus on coffee.”
Murillo has teamed up with a business partner, Gerardo Rivas, whose family has operated Rivas Bees around the Central Coast since 1978. Rivas said his honey finds its way into several of the beverages served from the truck, including one called Me-Latte.
“It’s like one local business helping out another local business,” Rivas said.
Murillo added that the pair has teamed up with Buena Vista Brewing on Hangar Way in Watsonville to release their own concoction of a porter style beer they’ll call Pajarette.
Cafécto’s vast menu features a selection of cold coffee drinks, a long list of add-on syrups, hot espresso drinks, their own version of hot “not coffee” drinks, breakfast tacos and burritos, turkey melts, club melts, seasonal fruit and avocado toast, with a selection of add-ons like bacon,ham or turkey and guacamole.
Murillo said they typically set up Tuesday-Thursday at Cabrillo College in Watsonville and most mornings on Westridge Drive (near Gold’s Gym).
“Here at Cabrillo we get the lunch rush for the Watsonville High kids and the Cabrillo students,” Murillo said. On the weekends, we open up our schedule to do catering. We’ve worked with Pajaro Valley Arts for various events. We have all traditional espresso-based drinks, signature drinks and we sell a lot of iced drinks. This is traditional American with a Mexican twist. Our families are from Jalisco so we want to incorporate those flavors like the cajeta, a Mexican take on dulce de leche, and agavate, a non-alcoholic tequila derived syrup.
For information, call 345-5211.
