Why Should Delaware Care?
Miriam Liliana Molina Mendez now owns the café inside the Delaware Art Museum where she has worked for 10 years. She’s working to make her coffee shop, and the museum, more accessible for the Latino and immigrant communities.
Miriam Liliana Molina Mendez found herself speaking Spanish.
The “Hola, buenos dias,” directed toward a stocky man in his mid-60s with a thick black mustache, escaped her mouth before she realized it wasn’t her usual, “Good morning, how can I help you?”
The man stood inside Molina Mendez’s coffee shop, Kaffeina Café, which occupies a corner of Wilmington’s Delaware Art Museum — facing the sculpture garden — on a recent March morning.
She quickly began apologizing for the slip-up.
Molina Mendez had welcomed a customer into her coffee shop in Spanish. She had never done that before.
But without skipping a beat, the man brightly responded, “Buenos dias,” and rattled off his coffee order in Spanish.
“I love it when people come and speak Spanish with me,” Molina Mendez said in her native tongue.
Molina Mendez has worked at the museum’s café for about a decade. The mother of four began there in 2016 as a chef, holding down two to three jobs just to make ends meet.
She weathered the COVID pandemic and multiple café owners. When the opportunity came to take over the business, Molina Mendez was scared. Maybe it was not the right time. Maybe she did not have enough money, or maybe her English was not the best, she thought.
Despite her fears, she bought the shop in 2024. Now, Kaffeina is all hers.
Molina Mendez overhauled the café’s fare to focus on fresh ingredients and innovative dishes with dashes of her home country, Mexico, sprinkled throughout. She hopes the change differentiates Kaffeina from most other museum cafeterias that offer the same basic fare.
Molina Mendez wants to welcome more customers from Latino and immigrant communities into her establishment. Many Spanish-speaking Latinos and immigrants are often afraid of trying new places because they are worried they won’t be understood — just as Molina Mendez felt when she first came to Delaware.
There are so few places where Latina mothers can gossip for the whole day, or where people can swing by to pick up their breakfast on the way to work, she said.
Kaffeina, she hopes, can be that place.
“It is a reflection of our community growing,” said Iz Balleto, a longtime customer of the café and cultural program manager at the Delaware Art Museum.
“After all,” Balleto added, “the American dream is real for those who understand what perseverance is about.”
‘And, here I am’
Molina Mendez first became a mother when she was 17 years old. Two years later, at her mother’s urging, she fled a domestic violence situation and came to Delaware from her home in Mexico City.
She started cleaning hotel rooms off U.S. Route 13 for $6.50 an hour — she still remembers the exact rate. Relatives told her only to go from her house to work, and back again, advising her not to go out.
From the hotel, Molina Mendez began working at a nearby Johnson & Johnson factory and worked multiple jobs from then on, ranging from McDonald’s and Arby’s, to the University of Delaware cafeteria and as a chef at the Newark Country Club.
In 2016, she began working as a chef at the museum café in the mornings. The coffee shop then closed after the onset of the pandemic, but Molina Mendez returned once it reopened under new ownership.
She helped change the menu, suggesting more diverse offerings and fresh food like tamales, ramen and empanadas. Then, she took over when the previous owner retired.
Molina Mendez was “very scared” to take on the café from the previous owner. What would happen if it failed? What would happen if it succeeded?
She spoke with her family as she mulled the decision. They reassured her that she should buy the shop — it would be doing work she was already familiar with.
“And here I am,” Molina Mendez said.
Seeing Molina Mendez evolve into Kaffeina’s owner after working at the shop for so long was “amazing,” said Balleto, who has known the chef since she started in 2016.
Molina Mendez comes to work every day with a smile on her face and is always willing to try new things, said Heather Morrissey, director of operations at the Delaware Art Museum.
She started implementing different initiatives at the café, such as an after-hours Valentine’s Day dinner and a monthly tea party on the last Wednesday of every month — complete with porcelain teacups and delicate finger sandwiches.
Customers also do not need to pay the museum’s entrance fee to enjoy the café. Kaffeina has a separate entrance near the sculpture garden and is open from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
“I want everyone to know that they’re welcome,” Molina Mendez said.
Molina Mendez hopes her café becomes a generational heirloom, passed down to her children and grandchildren. She hopes to eventually open a separate breakfast locale, too.
But for now, she wants to make her place a mainstay for Wilmington’s Latino community.
As Molina Mendez finished speaking in her coffee shop on that recent March morning, a man with a white goatee and a baseball cap walked up to the counter. He retrieved his takeout order, sitting in a brown paper bag, and headed toward the exit.
Upon hearing Molina Mendez chat in Spanish as he headed out the door, the man turned around with a gleeful smile.
“Esta bonito hablar el espanol, verdad?” he said.
“It’s nice to speak Spanish, right?”