Hospitality veterans will open Una Más specialty cafe in Tampa Heights

While some Floridians may associate the beginning of summer with sweltering heat, 8 p.m. sunsets and an uptick in mosquito bites, many folks in our local hospitality industry are preparing for their “slow” season, marked by snowbirds’ annual pilgrimage back up north. Despite a majority of local bars, restaurants and hotels gearing up for a quieter summer, an up-and-coming Tampa Heights cafe is getting ready to (slowly and steadily) open its doors.

Una Más —a specialty coffee shop with light, Hispanic comfort food-inspired bites—is the brainchild of longtime Tampa baristas and hospitality maestros Paola Chamorro Ward and Curt Hensley. Local coffee lovers may not necessarily know them by name, but chances are you’ve seen them behind the bar of beloved shops like Foundation, Union and King State just to name a few.

Chamorro Ward, 37, and 31-year-old Hensley’s current friendship and business partnership has decade-old roots that reach back when the two first worked at Buddy Brew together around 2014. The baristas ended up working side-by-side at Armature Works’ former cafe Union and then Foundation in Tampa Heights where they slung espresso and shared regulars. Two regulars in particular—Robby and Megan Wages of Fancy Free Nursery—would eventually serve a huge role in their debut business several years later.

Una Más will be located inside of the Tampa Heights plant shop (to the left when you walk through its doors), offering a “comfortable and familiar” atmosphere and about 20 seats, with most tables outside amongst the flora.

The duo hosts their first pop-up inside its future home at 1502 N Florida Ave. this weekend. You can give its tiny team a heads up if you’re attending by commenting “Vamos” on its recent Instagram post .

There's no cover for the Una Más sneak peak happening Saturday, May 11 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. inside Fancy Free Nursery in Tampa.
[event-1] Folks can expect a scaled-down version of what Una Más will eventually be—including a small spread of breakfast items, savory bites, cold brew and espresso from Hensley and Chamorro Ward’s brand new GS3 La Marzocco machine.

And like a lot of other great ideas, their small business kind of started out as a joke.

Chamorro Ward and Hensley most recently worked together at King State as its former GM and kitchen manager, respectively, and both departed their roles last spring. Chamorro Ward dove head first into her own cold brew delivery program and pop-up while Henley stuck with back of house gigs, and the two eventually circled back to the recurring notion of starting their own shop.

“We’ve always connected over our preferences for coffee and approach to service as a whole, and always kind of joked that we wanted to start something together one day,” Chamorro Ward tells Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “One of the best parts about being in the industry for so long is that we’re both at a point in our careers where we know what we’re good at and what we want out of our work.”

“We’ve both been doing this for so long, have worked at so many different spots, and have been a part of different openings that we just eventually decided to seriously start talking about doing something of our own,” Hensley adds.

Una Más’ bar will only sling espresso-based beverages using beans sourced from Colombia, an intentional move by Hensley and Chamorro Ward to highlight the wide variety of coffee that the South American country produces. A “barista special” will give their guests a true sample of their beverages, offering a “one and one,” (a double shot—one served solo and the other served with milk), 2 oz. of cold brew and 2 oz of drip.

Drawing from their Colombian and Cuban heritages, Una Más will offer Hispanic comfort food in quick service form. Small plates like cheesy corn arepas, picadillo over rice and black beans, breakfast burritos and pastel de pollo pastries are inspired by their childhoods, but also fit neatly in Tampa’s multi-cultural culinary landscape. A few non-coffee drinks like juice and tea will be on the menu, too.

Quick service and an approachable price point of $7-$12 for breakfast and lunch items are also at the forefront of their business ethos.

In addition to slinging samples of its “cocina & bebidas” menu this Saturday, Una Más will also have its first retail bag of beans for sale, a classic washed coffee from a co-op in Nariño, Colombia courtesy of Pinellas-based Eastlick Coffee and Yellow Rooster Coffee Imports. A collaboration with Wuz Here Coffee—a local Colombian coffee roaster stationed at L.P.C.X Café—may be in the works, too. All proceeds from this weekend’s pop-up will assist the duo with additional supplies and equipment needed for its summertime debut. The duo is funding Una Más independently without outside investors, and while that may make the cafe’s light buildout more of a challenge, Chamorro Ward says it’s an “advantage” as well.

“It’s made us be extremely intentional with our decisions and really think everything through,” Chamorro Ward says. “We’d rather start very simple and small and learn from that, only expanding if we really want to.”

“Growth, for us, won’t look like multiple locations or anything. We would love to get our own spot one day but we’re definitely not rushing anything,” Hensley adds.

In Tampa’s current hospitality scene, small scale, locally-owned and operated cafes and restaurants seem few and far between compared to the droves of corporate entities or out-of-town concepts with big money investors.

Both Chamorro Ward and Hensley have found their niche in an industry they've dedicated so many years of their lives to— an effortless expression of not only their respective cultures, but their integrity and intuitive approach to service. While expansion and rapid growth is the name of the game for some local businesses, Una Más will slowly exist in its small corner of Tampa Heights, steadily growing alongside its de facto customer base of former regulars and fellow industry workers.

“We’re not trying to be everything to everyone and overreach at all, we’re just trying to do what we know and also what we think is missing in Tampa,” Hensley tells CL. “We just want to be consistently good and provide great customer service—not the cheesy, phony stuff—but like that genuine connection you have with regulars who become actual friends.”

For the latest updates on Una Más and its summertime opening, head to @unamastpa on Instagram . After the specialty cafe debuts, its ownership plans to be open Wednesday-Sunday from about 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m., but that may be subject to change.

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