By Anna Grace Likes

Leaning out the window of the iconic yellow trailer beneath a yellow striped awning, Caffecitos co-owner Pablo Corona snaps a picture of a group of college girls holding iced coffees. 

Around them, more Ole Miss students and Oxford natives alike crowd around the truck’s massive potted fern plants and outdoor seating while a loud “THANK YOU MAMA” from Corona calls after a happy customer and echoes through the crowded parking lot.

In the past three years, this bustling environment has become an everyday scene for Pablo Corona and his partner of seventeen years, Chad Collier. The Caffecitos coffee truck quickly became one of Oxford’s staple spots not only due to its high-quality drinks but also because of the welcoming and loving atmosphere Corona and Collier created from their little trailer.

“I am the game show host, he is the executive producer,” Corona said. “He put it together, and I told him ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they buy it and come back for more because they’re gonna love the product.”

To the citizens and students of Oxford, they and their truck are now a sort of cultural icon as a result of this business expertise. Quickly after starting their business back in 2021, the two assumed these roles to create a special brand experience for their customers with Collier manning the behind-the-scenes work with his previous roasting and managerial experience and Corona handling the up-front customer interactions by building real relationships.

The people did keep coming back again and again—for more of both them and their coffee. As the ‘game show host,’ Corona managed to gain quite a following from students and the Oxford community. He has become known for his over-the-top, peppy attitude and for having a genuine conversation with anyone and everyone who walks up to the trailer.

“Caffecitos quickly became family. They have some of the best coffee in Oxford, but that’s not only what keeps people coming back. I think it’s the way they make every single customer feel—loved and so special!” Brianna Szewczyk, a sophomore at Ole Miss and regular customer of Caffecitos, said.

The pair did not start out as Oxford icons, chosen family, or really even business owners.

They met in 2008 in New York City as artists, and when Oxford-born Collier decided that city life was not for him, they moved back to Oxford in 2010 to both begin a career in wedding photography.

The idea initially came from Collier, who during the Covid-19 pandemic was put in charge of launching Ole Miss’ Starship robots on campus. Noticing that the most consistently ordered item from students was usually a coffee drink, he realized there could be a lucrative business opportunity to open some sort of coffee shop in Oxford that catered to students.

“We said, ‘Let’s figure out how we sell this coffee and compete with Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, all these places that do the same thing.’ And we realized that the only way to do it was to downsize it and figure it out,” said Corona.

That is how the Caffecitos trailer came to be. Collier left Starship and the two focused solely on building their business and brand, both in person and online. One of the biggest aspects that allowed them to grow from nothing to one of the most beloved spots in Oxford in just three years was their social media presence.

“I started out with zero followers and now I’m at 7,000, so I know it correlates when I see new social media followers then new people at the window daily,” Corona said.

Corona found from the day they opened that he could take a picture from his window of people who came to the trailer, and these people loved both chatting with him and getting posted on the Caffecitos Instagram, so they then shared it with their friends. Gaining followers consistently led to an increase in sales, so Pablo kept posting.

“I just thought I was going to sell coffee, but I guess my personality clicked with some people so I made myself vulnerable,” Corona said. “I’m not pretending to be anything, and that’s been the best experience for me to just be myself. Y’all understand I’m gay and I might have a high-pitched voice and I like to clap and I know it’s weird, but y’all just get it.”

The trailer, Instagram photos, and even the color yellow have become iconic aspects of the Caffecitos brand, and it looks like, at least in the near future, it will stay that way. Corona and Collier have tried on three separate occasions to sign leases on a brick-and-mortar space for their coffee shop to grow, but each time it just has not been quite right.

“Every time we come back to our roots and say, ‘That’s not for us,’” Corona said. “When the right time comes, we’ll change. But this is not broken, so I don’t need to fix it. And I think y’all like the novelty of it being in our little yellow trailer.”

Successful entrepreneurs like them have now figured out how to balance their work and personal lives because they understand it only makes for a higher quality experience for them and their customers.

“We close at 12, and we are not even open on the weekends. For quality of life we take weekends off so that we’re always happy to wake up and do it again on Monday,” Corona said.

Anna Grace Likes is a UM Journalism Student