SLO County coffee trailer wants to make eco-friendly easy. Inside Tiny Café
The first cafe to get its green business certification in San Luis Obispo County does not even have its own brick-and-mortar spot yet.
Tiny Café, a pop-up coffee trailer in the Lincoln Deli parking lot, received its green business certification from EcoSLO as part of the larger California Green Business Network by engaging in sustainable practices and reducing its environmental impact.
“It’s surprising,” co-owner Colin Brown told The Tribune. “It just seems like every business should be green-business certified. We just had some steps to go through, and decided to choose certain products over others, but it really is a bottom line that should be met by more people.”
Brown started Tiny Café with co-owner Emily Quady in 2023, with a pop-up tent outside Bread Bike off Parker Street.
The duo served up specialty coffees and ceremonial-grade matcha for two seasons at the downtown SLO Farmers Market, before moving to Lincoln Deli’s outdoor space in 2024 and providing catering for special events.
“We bootstrapped this business, so a brick and mortar was so far out of reach that we focused on catering first, and that’s when we saw that there was an opportunity for us to grow as a business,” Quady told The Tribune. “There are not that many coffee catering businesses here on the Central Coast.”
Quady and Brown specialize in weddings and bachelorette parties, birthdays, business meetings and other large events. They both call themselves “eco nerds,” and worked in popular coffee shops around SLO, studying the best way to perfect a cup of coffee in record time and use the best sustainable ingredients for their future cafe.
“Starting a business also felt like an opportunity to help the people that we work with understand where our values come from and why we choose to separate trash, for example, or source better materials for our operations,” Brown said.
Tiny Café operates out of a small beige trailer, with bamboo straws, compostable cups and organic milk for lattes, but both Quady and Brown agree that receiving the certification is about more than that.
“It goes so much deeper than offering organic milk,” Quady said. “It’s like what soaps do you use, what water gaskets do you use? What refrigerants are in your refrigerator? It goes pretty deep, and it was just really fun to learn about how we can improve our business and become more sustainable.”
What’s on the menu at SLO County’s first green business mobile cafe?
Tiny Café’s menu includes espresso classics like a cortado, americano, cappuccino and flat white.
Its seasonal syrups and lattes include an eispanner cafe latte with the cafe’s salted vanilla flavor and cold foam and an organic blueberry matcha.
The drinks range from $2 to $14 with all the enhancements, while customers can receive a dollar off any drink if they bring their own cup.
“We’re trying to create systems where even in a rush, even when it gets busy, the systems are in place for us to do the right thing,” Quady said. “Make the greener choice the easier choice. That’s a big goal of ours.”
Tiny Café currently has its mobile trailer next to Lincoln Market & Deli from Friday to Sunday, but the tiny cafe’s dreams are larger than its current size.
Brown and Quady hope to open a brick and mortar for Tiny Café by the middle of 2027, and have some future plans that are currently being planted.
“It feels like we always have a few seeds planted, and we don’t know if they’re going to grow into a beautiful tree,” Brown said. “We have a few seeds planted that are turning into little saplings right now, and hopefully they’ll survive.”
For more information
Tiny Café at 496 Broad St. in SLO is open on Friday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information about the blooming coffee spot, visit its website at tinycafe.xyz.
