Cachuma Café is a new student-run pop-up cafe where UC Santa Barbara students can have drinks such as the kulfi cold brew, tiramisu cold brew and the Cachuma sunrise while supporting the UCSB Rowing team and other organizations.

Shroff aims to expand the café’s menu options to include matcha and espresso-based drinks. Courtesy of Shubham Shroff

Shubham Shroff, founder of Cachuma Café and fourth-year statistics and data science and economics & accounting double major, said his idea to start the pop-up has been “brewing for a while now.” It all started last winter quarter, when his roommate bought a brand new espresso machine. After experimenting with a variety of drinks for his friends and teammates, they encouraged him to start Cachuma Café.

Despite the support he received from his peers, starting the cafe was an initially daunting task for Shroff. 

“All my friends really loved it, and they’re like, ‘You know what? You lowkey have something here, you should start a pop-up of your own,” Shroff said. “I laughed it off at the time. I was like, ‘I don’t know, it just seems scary. I’ve never started my own business, so I don’t know if I want to do all that.’ But you know, the rest is history!”

Shroff spent the past summer planning and preparing the debut of his business, including creating a logo, an Instagram account, the drink menu and a website. He also chose the name, taking reference from Lake Cachuma, where the UCSB rowing team practices and where the initial proceeds from the events have gone. As a member of the rowing team, he felt that he wanted to give back to his community. 

“The name Cachuma is based on Lake Cachuma, and it’s personal to me, because that’s where the rowing team practices every day. So I wanted to share that with the students at UCSB,” Shroff said. 

Café Cachuma has had several pop-ups around campus and I.V. Courtesy of Shubham Shroff

Cachuma Café partners with Mayorga Coffee, a sustainably sourced organic coffee brand that imports beans from Latin America. Mayorga Coffee’s mission is to empower underrepresented farmers, and they supply all of the coffee beans for the small business. 

“They actually sent us a five-pound bag for our first pop-up, and they were like, ‘We’d love to keep working with you and your fundraisers in the future,’” Shroff said.

Their menu, which can be found on their Instagram, currently offers cold brews made from scratch. However, Shroff noted that he is looking to expand the menu to include matcha and espresso-based drinks. Since its launch, Cachuma Café has had two advertised pop-up events. The first occurred out of an apartment in Isla Vista, and the second was held at the Isla Vista Community Center as a part of the Mini Market Series hosted by Thriftopia I.V. 

“For our first pop-up, which was friends and friends of friends, the tiramisu was definitely the most popular. But for the second one, we actually sold out of the kulfi cold brew in like an hour and a half, and we were there for four hours,” Shroff said. 

Although the profits have only been directed toward the rowing team, Shroff is looking to expand the business by collaborating with other clubs and student groups on campus. Cachuma Café’s next pop-up will be in collaboration with Taara, a competitive Bollywood fusion dance team on campus.

Café Cachuma offers customers with cold brew beverages including Kulfi Cold Brew, Tiramisu Cold Brew and the Cachuma Sunrise. Courtesy of Shubham Shroff

Shroff highlighted the legal struggles in starting up the business. Cachuma Café obtained a permit to run the pop-up as a fundraiser but noted that, for the business to become more profitable in the future, there would need to be more paperwork involved. 

“The city doesn’t make it easy to find all of the forms and [get] all of these permits. So that was definitely the hardest part. I had to call so many different departments only to not get answers from anyone,” Shroff said.

Shroff emphasized the role of his friends in the formation of the business and the community that he has been able to create with Cachuma Café.

“They’re doing everything, like whatever I needed them to do. They’d be my baristas; if I needed any ingredients, if I needed people to come, they’d be there to do it … It definitely wouldn’t be possible without them,” Shroff said. 

A version of this article appeared on p.4  of the Oct. 30 print edition of the Daily Nexus.