One cup at a time, Jackie Nguyen is serving as a beacon for Asian culture.
By Weston Owen | Photos by Paul Andrews
Kansas City is a tapestry of unique stories — individual threads that, when woven together, create a strong and beautiful community. Jackie Nguyen, owner of Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop, Café Cà Phê, is one of those threads. While her path to our Midwest gem of a city was unexpected and born in a time of uncertainty, her positive impact now radiates, shining a light on Asian culture and marginalized demographics.
In March of 2020, Jackie — who’d been an actor in New York for a decade — was traveling across the United States for her Broadway role in Miss Saigon, a gig she’d worked incredibly hard to land. She received a call that, due to the pandemic, her show was going to be closed indefinitely. Devastating for her and her castmates, she committed to remain resilient and found her way to Kansas City for what she believed would be a temporary stay.
When she arrived, she knew she wanted to carve her niche, yet she found there wasn’t as much Asian diversity or representation as she’d grown up with in San Diego as a first-generation Vietnamese American. That’s when she tapped into a former life — nearly 10 years of being a barista in New York — and started selling Vietnamese coffee in Westport. One cup at a time, word began spreading and Café Cà Phê was born.When she arrived, she knew she wanted to carve her niche, yet she found there wasn’t as much Asian diversity or representation as she’d grown up with in San Diego as a first-generation Vietnamese American. That’s when she tapped into a former life — nearly 10 years of being a barista in New York — and started selling Vietnamese coffee in Westport. One cup at a time, word began spreading and Café Cà Phê was born.
Understanding how much people were enjoying her coffee, which is deeply rooted in Vietnamese flavor profiles, she took the remaining money she had from Miss Saigon and purchased a food truck, which allowed her to travel throughout the Kansas City metro, expanding her visibility and building the brand’s culture. Her product’s popularity continued to grow at breakneck speed, eventually affording her the opportunity to open her own brick-and-mortar storefront in Columbus Park.
And Jackie’s commitment to KC is even bigger than coffee. Recognizing a need, in 2022 she also founded the AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander) Identity Festival, which has grown exponentially each year since its inception. In 2024, the groundbreaking festival celebrated its first year in another trailblazing venue — CPKC Stadium, home of the KC Current and the first stadium purpose-built for a women’s sports team.
While Café Cà Phê has become a local favorite by many in Kansas City, it’s the exposure and acceptance that Jackie found — and created — in KC that has made all the difference. “It’s incredibly moving and inspiring being somewhere that building a community around culture and inclusivity can be reality.”
Jackie’s path to the Midwest may have been unscripted, but her legacy is now woven into the Kansas City story — strengthening this region as a place of belonging and where together, everyone can find their voice.
