The owners of Del Pueblo Café, who took over the family-run business nearly two years ago, are asking the community to help keep the restaurant open after skyrocketing rents and growing business costs have put the Goleta Mexican mainstay on the brink of closing its doors for good.
Giselle Cuevas and Victor Camargo took over Del Pueblo Café from Cuevas’s uncle in November 2023 (the business was originally opened by her grandparents Alejandro and Esperanza Arreola in 1997), and for the past several months, the young couple has been working seven days a week keeping the restaurant running, despite a backlog of bills and a change in building ownership that have made the day-to-day operations an uphill battle.
Even in the face of the financial challenges, Cuevas and Camargo instilled a new sense of energy into the longtime local spot, updating the menus, focusing on high-quality authentic recipes, and hosting community fundraising events to support the Central Coast immigrant community.
On October 4, Cuevas and Camargo posted a message on Del Pueblo Café’s Instagram account, in which the owners opened up about their financial struggles and asked the community to donate to their GoFundMe page to help pay a large past-due sum to prevent being forced to close…