Tres Leches Cafe, the Mexican coffee shop that built a cult following on cafecito, pan dulce and Dia de los Muertos altars, is closing its doors for good after 12 years in business. Owner José Rivera says the last remaining location, in Phoenix’s Coronado Historic District, will shut down by the end of September as he runs out of ways to keep paying his staff.
Rivera opened Tres Leches Cafe in 2014 as a front-porch coffee cart, a scrappy $80 start that grew into Arizona’s first Mexican gourmet coffee shop, according to Tres Leches Cafe. As reported by Phoenix New Times, Rivera opened his first standalone storefront on Roosevelt Street in 2016, then expanded into a Van Buren Street location, a south Phoenix drive-thru in 2020, and a third Phoenix location in 2022 before that outpost closed in 2023.
By the start of 2026, the business was down to just two shops: the south Phoenix drive-thru and a newer location in the Coronado Historic District at 1302 East McDowell Road. The Coronado shop, which opened by the end of 2025, became Rivera’s final operational storefront after the south Phoenix drive-thru shuttered following its last day of service on September 6. The drive-thru had served the neighborhood for six years, but the report notes that operations there were severely impacted by multi-year light rail construction along South Central Avenue that disrupted traffic and customer access starting in 2019. Staff from that location moved to the Coronado cafe on McDowell Road and 13th Street, per the same account.
A Lease Fight That Wouldn’t End
The closures cap a years-long legal battle that began with the cafe’s original flagship, which had occupied a building at 17th Avenue and Van Buren Street since 2018. In December 2023, Rivera filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court alleging that landlord Otilia Diaz breached their lease and failed to make necessary repairs, including fixing roof leaks, faulty HVAC units, and underground plumbing issues that flooded the kitchen, according to Phoenix New Times…