What the heck is Cafe Cà Phê? 

What do you do when you don’t have a place to go to where you feel seen? Well, I guess you create one. So, that’s what I did. 

Café Cà Phê is Kansas City’s first and only Vietnamese coffeeshop. The goal has always been to create a cultural hub in Kansas City for marginalized communities, especially AAPI folks. On May 20, 2023, all the work we’ve put in thus far—all the spilled milk, late nights, and many many syrup stains—culminated in an outpouring of love for the Kansas City AAPI Community. AAPICONIC: The 2023 Kansas City AAPI Festival.

Kansas City, although an upcoming and sickening city, lacks much representation for Asian people. We took this into our own hands and changed that. AAPICONIC was a love letter to Kansas City’s AAPI Community for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. This was the second year that Kansas City officially recognized the month to be dedicated to AAPI Heritage (Also implemented by Cafe Cà Phê the year prior.)  

This event was a thank you to all the hella cool people who have believed in and supported us thus far. Who support the movement. Who want more inclusion. More diversity. More Asian voices to be heard. Without this support, Café Cà Phê would be nothing. 

Going in, I had a clear vision of what I wanted the day to be. The most obvious: I wanted Kansas City’s AAPI community to feel loved, seen, and proud to be Asian. Be PROUD to rep Asians in the Midwest! I hoped to look around and witness folks see bits of their culture reflected back at them. I wanted them to see how dope Asian people can be and how much excitement we can build around our culture. Above all though, I wanted to celebrate them, and give them a space to celebrate themselves.

It’s the Day of the Event, ya’ll.

Saturday morning, 10 AM. It was finally here. Our staff had spent the past 3 months busting our butts to bring this event to life, and I had no doubt in my mind it was going to be incredible. Maybe lots of anxiety, lol. But excitement, hell yeah! 

Even before we opened, a line of attendees began wrapping all the way from our Cà Phê trailer around the back end of the grass, at least 100 people deep. You could feel the burgeoning excitement as the sweet aroma of barbeque and baked goods filled the air. Oh man, this was about to be so lit! 

We gathered 40+ marginalized-owned businesses to set up around the park, selling everything from crafts to tea to giving out free condoms. Some of which were debuting their small businesses AT the event! There were 4 coffee stations plus our Cà Phê trailer nonstop churning out the Mango Sticky Rice Latte, an homage to our recent staff trip to Thailand and the truly ungodly amount of Mango Sticky Rice we all consumed. Shoutout to the Mango syrup provided by Torani, whoop whoop! 

Live music reverberated out into the streets of Kansas City as the audience filled the space in front of the stage, clapping and cheering along with a jam-packed lineup of brilliantly talented AAPI performers. From a fashion show of Asian clothing from various heritages, to an Asian DJ, Vietnamese singers, K-pop dance troupe to Polynesian dancers – we were OUT HERE IN THESE STREETS REPRESENTING! 

For me, the Vietnamese Dragon Dance was a highlight of the day. As a first generation Vietnamese-American woman, seeing Kansas City engage with such a quintessential celebration of Vietnamese culture—many of them for the first time—made me feel so deeply proud to be here. Not to mention, the dancers were incredible and it was so much fun for me personally to watch. Truly iconic. 

The line literally did not die down for the entire event. We welcomed over 3000 guests into our space, many familiar faces but many more new friends. We danced, we sang, we laughed, we shouted, we embraced. We got sunburnt and lost our voices. We drank too many Mango Sticky Rice Lattes, yet somehow not enough. We paved the way for young AAPI kids to recognize their own skin. 

Towards the end, I found myself a quiet spot behind the trailer. I took a deep breath, felt my feet root into the ground below me, and stared out into a sea of excited, albeit sunburn faces. I paused a moment to take it all in. “We made this happen,” I reflected. “I cannot wait to see what comes next.”

In the weeks following AAPICONIC, many of the vendors approached our staff to let them know AAPICONIC was close to if not actually the most profitable day their small businesses had ever had. For me, that’s the hugest compliment our team could get and truly what makes all the hard work with it—knowing this thing we’re building is so much bigger than any one of us, and if we keep working together, there’s nothing out of reach for Café Cà Phê and the small businesses we love. 

Follow more of our journey on
Instagram: @cafecaphe 

Website: www.cafecaphe.com