Meet the Fruition Team
Meet Roberto and Winny:
The Coffee Was Always There:
"My first memory of coffee… lives in my head more like a series of memories blended together into a type of feeling, a comfort, a nostalgic smell. I never thought about coffee when I was a child, but it was always there.” Roberto’s mother would put a pot of drip on before the house woke up. "I'm talking before she would wake us, before breakfast, before anything." It was there again after dinner, when his father would pull out a moka pot — aka La Greca — and make what the family called espresso. "It was simple for them, nothing special about it. However, it was consistent.”
He describes his own routine the way he described his parents'. "I, very much like my parents, wake up, and the first thing I do is make some coffee. I also LOVE making some coffee after a big meal. Coffee in and of itself is a culture.”
When Roberto took a trip to a small finca in Choachí, in Colombia's Cundinamarca region, he “witnessed the work that these dedicated farmers put in every single day. Did you know that it takes a coffee tree three to four years to bear its first harvest? That to me is something so special. The care with which they tended to the earth, plants, and fruits.” He thinks about them constantly. "Every time I taste a coffee, every time I'm dialing one in, and every time I see a customer's face light up after drinking it. I love seeing folks who usually go for a different style of coffee come up hesitantly but curious – Love serving them something new and exciting and watching their face light up. Then seeing them come back next week. I love developing those connections, with the vendors at our farmers market, the customers who come see us every week.”
Roberto is one of Fruition's three owners, and one of two who immigrated here. "Being an immigrant is hard. Really hard, don't let anyone tell you different. You move to a new country, not speaking the language, leaving most likely your entire family and friends behind, with questions, uncertainties, no real guarantees that things will be better for you or your children. But you push forward, hold on to what culture and pieces of home you can, and adapt. We try to hold on to that warmth, resilience, kindness and, most importantly, culture. Le pones ganas. Si te dejas, perdiste."
A Way of Life:
Winny Rojas has been drinking coffee since she was four months old. "My mom does love to tell me the story of how I ended up in the hospital as a four-month-old baby because my grandmother would not stop dipping her fingers in coffee and giving me café con leche to make sure I developed a taste for coffee. As you can see, I mean it literally when I say I've been drinking coffee since I was a baby."
"Coffee in my Dominican family is a way of life. It was always around, morning, afternoon, and night." And it was made one way and one way only: "In my house we only had a greca. Actually, it wasn't until I married Roberto that I knew it had a name in English — Moka Pot!” She knows every method now, but "whenever I am homesick or am by myself, that is the method I always revert back to."
Winny works in agriculture and is completing a master's degree in it: "Farming and cultivation is a core part of who I am… For me, it is of the utmost importance to give producers the respect of caring for their crop and the work they put into it. That is why at Fruition Coffee you will always have an amazing cup — because we not only care deeply about our customers but also the land and the people who make this possible for us to drink every day."
Fruition sets up at the Encino Farmers Market every Sunday, where Winny watches for one thing — "I love watching their expression while they take that first sip and you see their eyes light up. I also love how often new customers will go out of their way and come back just to tell us how delicious their cup of coffee was.”
"From our families, we've learned the importance of perseverance, and most importantly, to go after the things we want.
If they can accomplish all of that, then there's very little we can't do, is there?"
We Hope All Your Dreams Come To Fruition
Welcome to Fruition Coffee! We strive to bring accessibility to the luxury that is a well-balanced and nurtured cup of coffee. Dedicated to offering the respect that coffee demands, to the farmers and the beautiful evergreen plants that provide it.