Today we’d like to introduce you to Xiomi Oviedo.
Hi Xiomi, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Please Stay Coffee began in our small 900sqft duplex. It was 2024, my husband and I had lived in Austin for 3 years and I was struggling with building community and as someone who loves and thrives being around people and engaging with people my mental health was declining. My husband had gifted me an espresso machine for valentines the year before and I remember telling him that i really wanted to host coffee shop mornings at the house. I worked in coffee for about 5 years and at the time i was working in the social work field so I wanted to get back to my passion for coffee while also finding a way to hopefully build community. So my husband agreed and we started something we called “Coffee with Friends”, a free house cafe for our friends and their friends and any one who wanted to come from around the neighborhood of our instagram post. We hosted for a year and people loved to come and some would show up and go and some would show up and stay all day. It was so fun to see so many different people from different parts of life show up and connect and meet people they would never meet otherwise. At the end of the day we just wanted to create a space where people felt safe and without the pressure of having buy something to hang out and exist. It was absolutely incredible. Through that i saw the potential for doing mobile espresso catering and so we upgraded, bought a cart and started booking wedding and parties of sorts without a plan or a name really. We picked a name maybe 3 months into booking some events and slowly started to build our branding and build who we wanted to be. We wanted to be people oriented, mental health forward and community driven. So Please Stay Coffee was born and “sip slow, stay a while” became our mantra. Slowing down in a world that goes so fast is hard and not a lot of places and spaces encourage slowing down. We want to create a culture of slowing down, putting our phones on silent and enjoying community and connection.
It was mid 2025 that i saw my first Tiny Farmers Market TikTok and I reached out to Hanna about providing some free pre bottled lattes for her small market that at the time was just a few of her friends on her sidewalk. She agreed and I dropped off some pre bottled lattes and they did really well! After that, i started to pop up every month at Tiny and it has become one of my favorite events! The heart and mission behind Tiny Farmers Market is so well aligned with ours, building community and meeting our neighbors. This year we have partnered with them to give back to the community through A Tiny Farmers Latte where the proceeds go back into the Austin community we all love. That market alone has opened so many other doors to other markets and pop ups and it has even opened the door for us to be featured in KXAN. Giving back has certainly opened more doors than imagined. We have donated and sponsored lots of other events by offering free pre bottled lattes or free lattes for their events from tattoo shops like It’s Permanent to El Studio Pilates to Kore Kollective. Now we find ourselves receiving inquiries from places I could not imagine to selling out at pop ups and having to upgrade machines and carts and systems!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been everything but smooth but not awful! I’ve learned so much as this has taken off. Working 2 jobs and doing pop ups and catering events feels a lot like having 3 jobs. So you can imagine a lot of my preparation happens between 10pm and 2am. Syrups and packing and making sure everything is in order. Long nights and early mornings and not a lot of sleep. When you are doing so much you miss things, you make more mistakes and a lot of mistakes have been made in ordering, forgetting tools, forgetting appointments and having to rush. I’m not administratively gifted so that part has also been a learning curve, having to stay organized and financially smart has been a challenge. I am thankful for all of the challenges and the growing I’ve had to do in the last year to be where I want to be in the future. I’ve had to make changes in lifestyle and habits. I’m now at a place where i am having to quit one of my jobs to support Please Stay Coffee at a larger capacity which is exciting as much as it is a little scary.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a mobile espresso and matcha cart but more than just serving coffee and matcha we want to make your space, event, wedding, party or whatever it is you are hosting as memorable and warm and inviting as possible!
We are most known for caring about our community, our mission and our specialty latte flavors. I am from El Salvador and love Salvadoran culture. We take inspiration from tropical flavors such us our Banana Horchata latte. It is by far our most popular and now our second most popular is the Sugar and Smoke, a brown sugar marshmallow latte. All of our syrups are house made using only organic ingredients. Soon during the spring we will release a drink I am extremely excited about using the beautiful cashew fruit! Brand wise we are most proud of our collaborations, meeting others who value about community as much as we are. In the end, we really just want to create a safe third space for people to exist without any pressure or discomfort. So if you are looking for something made special just for you from a syrup to an experience we love a theme and we love creating unique individual moments for your event, party, wedding, even backyard hang out, we are your people! We work with any and all budgets because above all, we believe coffee should be accessible and stress free to everyone!
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Most people don’t know that Please Stay came from a clothing brand we used to have called “I Love you, please stay”. Something that started as a mental health awareness brand to bring awareness and remind those who are struggling that you are not alone. We’ve taking that concept and applied it to coffee. “Sip slow, stay awhile” is a big part of that. So many great and deep conversation happen and revolve around coffee. In the same way, in my personal life, i’ve had so many conversation over coffee that have saved my life and talked me off the edge. It is so easy to forget the power of slowing down and having a conversation. It can save lives and we don’t even realize it. We haven’t done the best job of talking about that on our socials but it is something we are working very hard to do this year!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pleasestaycoffee.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pleasestaycoffee
