Sneakerheads and caffeine connoisseurs gain a shared destination with Encanto Kicks & Coffee, the recently opened café, sneaker and apparel store at 2110 E Norris Street in Fishtown.
For owners, husband-and-wife Louis and Aiyana Quiles, the reasoning behind the unexpected combination is simple.
“I love sneakers and she loves coffee,” Louis, 24, told Billy Penn. “So, it’s a part of both of us.”
Louis — who was born in Puerto Rico and moved with his family to Philly when he was six — traces his passion, and an entrepreneurial flair, for sneakers to his high school days, when he and a friend sold pairs to their schoolmates to fund their own personal collections. Owning a sneaker shop, he said, “is something I always wanted to do.”
The cafe concept came later, growing through his relationship with now-wife Aiyana, an avid coffee drinker. “She taught me how to make [coffee],” he said, “and I fell in love with trying to make the lattes and the formulas.”
Beyond its shared appeal, the pairing is strategic. “If you look at [independent] sneaker stores like this, a lot of them don’t really last,” Louis said. Having the café as a source of extra revenue he hopes will keep the whole operation “sustainable so that we can last longer than the average sneaker store.”
Naming their venture, the couple drew from their shared heritage, or “Isla del Encanto, which is Puerto Rico,” Louis explained, stressing “not the movie. A lot of people think it’s the movie.”
Encanto’s coffee menu centers on Café Oro beans imported from Puerto Rico. Louis chose the brand, he explained, because of its smoothness and mixability with syrups used for the café’s specialty, or signature, drinks. “It’s like the perfect blend where you can still taste the coffee and the flavors that we put in them,” he said.
Besides drip coffee and espressos, cortados, and cappuccinos, Encanto currently serves three specialty drinks, with the couple working on developing more. The first, Air Force One, blends coffee with caramel and white chocolate syrups; Retro Sun Club combines coconut and brown sugar syrups with coconut milk and coffee topped with cinnamon, while Triple Pink is a vanilla and strawberry latte. Oat and almond milks are offered, as well as a range of flavored shots, like pumpkin spice, lavender, and chocolate Milano. Iced coffees and hot teas and chai are also on the menu.
In addition to beverages, Encanto sells pastries provided by Puerto Rican bakery Simply Antojitos. Tornillos and quesitos — puff pastries pumped with cream, and cheese — are available, as are pastelitos de guayaba — wider, flakier, and guava-filled. There’s tres leches cake, its slices served in miniature trays, strawberry- or biscoff-flavored cheesecake shooters, and limber — a traditional ice pop with a name apparently derived from Charles Lindbergh after landing on the island in 1928. It comes in cheesecake, cocoa, Oreo, or passion fruit flavors. A variety of cookies rounds up the sweets.
On the sneaker side of the store, several brands line the longer wall; Nike, New Balance, Asics, and Adidas, including a Bad Bunny collaboration Louis points out. At Encanto, he’s focusing on stocking limited edition sneakers otherwise hard to come by.
“A lot of these sneakers, once they come out, you’ll never see that particular colorway again released by that brand,” he said, referring to a shoe’s blend of palette and pattern. For the store, Louis sources his sneakers directly from retailers as well as through conventions and other collectors. All pairs sold at Encanto, he said, are new and authenticated.
It’s been a smooth first week of business, Louis said, with customers coming in for morning coffee eventually gravitating towards the sneaker half of the 1,600 sq ft space. “A lot of people seem to like Dunks. Asics have been selling,” he said. Of the 35 pairs of Nike Puerto Rican AF1’s (namesake to one of Encanto’s signature drinks) he had in stock, only two remain. Since opening, he’s been surveying customers for preferences to guide his inventory.
“It’s just something that transcends cultures,” Louis said of the fandom surrounding the footwear, and the urge to collect. “It doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, Hispanic, if you have a nice pair of sneakers, anybody can recognize that.”
Apparel is also available—t-shirts from Florida-based Core Gallerie and Circle Author, as well as Atlanta designer Red Letters, and hoodies, shorts and caps from Philadelphia brand Prevale Apparel.
Moving forward, Louis hopes to bring in more local talent, with tentative plans for a series of in-store exhibitions featuring Fishtown artists. An on-site book club, to be hosted by his wife Aiyana, is in the works, as are sneaker bingo nights. The couple also want to run a monthly raffle, where any purchase over $10 automatically enters the customer in the running for a pair of sneakers.
There are also aspirations to expand the coffee offerings to other Puerto Rican brands. “I started with one, but I want to bring in more. I want to give more of a spotlight to smaller farms” Louis said, “to see if I can help them grow their business in Puerto Rico.”
In the meantime, his excitement is centered on a more immediate arrival. “They’re not here yet,” Louis said at the time of interview, “but we’re gonna get a pair of Chicago Ones”—significant for a colorway inspired by the original Air Jordan 1 high top. “It’s my favorite sneaker, so I’m just excited to have it in store to share with people.”
2110 E Norris St | 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday | (445) 500-9358 | @encanto.phl
