Santa Coffee: Brewing Coffee and a Whole Lot More at the Salt Lake Farmers Market

As I stroll past booths filled with local honey, homemade bread, tempting pastries and lush produce, I take my first sip. I close my eyes and let the earthy, coffee-infused warmth, laced with a subtle sweetness, spread across my palate. A hint of molasses gives the cup a familiarity, yet in a way that feels delightfully unexpected.

It’s a frigid post-holiday Saturday morning in January and I’m in Salt Lake City at the Downtown Farmers Market, where dozens of local growers, artisans, bakers and craftspeople have gathered inside the former home of the Leonardo Museum and now called Civic Center, at 209 E. 500 South, to offer the fruits of their labors. Minutes earlier, I’d made a beeline for Santa Coffee where the coffee cart’s founder and owner, Marisa Martinez, greeted me with a wide smile. When I asked what drinks were most popular, she recommended the strawberry matcha, “best over ice,” she said, and the Café de Olla, an espresso drink made with star anise, cinnamon, clove, milk and piloncillo or Mexican rock sugar. That chilly day made the decision easy. Marisa’s best friend and co-worker, Melissa, prepared my Café de Olla, or “coffee from the pot,” stirring the spices and sugar in the traditional Mexican way in a clay vessel, while Marisa and I chatted. I learned about how she made the improbable transition from hair stylist to barista, the catalyst for launching her coffee cart business, and the story behind its cheeky name.  

Marisa was born in Mexico and grew up living between her home country and Provo, where her uncle had settled upon completing a mission there with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When she was 12, Marisa’s parents divorced and her mother moved with her and her sister to Springville, a small town just south of Utah County’s biggest city. There, Marisa enrolled in cosmetology school while still in high school and began doing hair full-time at age 17.

Having been raised with strict adherence to Mormon ideology, which forbids coffee consumption, and in Utah County, where coffee shops were once few and far between, Marisa didn’t encounter coffee culture until she made a trip to Europe as an adult. “I fell in love with how social coffee is and how it brings people together,” she said.

Piping hot at the Winter Market every Saturday.

At the time, Marisa owned a hair salon and when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, kept the salon open while many others in the state shut down. Eventually, the anxiety of running a high-contact business during a pandemic began to impact her health. She downsized from salon ownership to renting a booth, then quit doing hair altogether. “That’s when I told my then-husband I wanted a year to see if I could start a coffee business,” she says.

But then in April 2021, life intervened. Marisa’s mother, who had remarried and moved back to Mexico several years earlier, was diagnosed with cancer. And though she reassured Marisa that everything was going well, her mother passed away just seven months later, soon after Marisa had arrived in Mexico for a visit. “I had not seen her since 2019 and thought I was going to Mexico to take care of her, not bring her ashes back home with me in a box,” Marisa said.

After her mother’s death, Marisa decided to go all in with Santa Coffee. “My mom was always cheering us on, and I knew she’d want me to do it,” she explained. A Crossfit Halloween party was Santa Coffee’s first pop-up event. The following summer, Marisa applied for and landed a weekly slot at the Provo Farmers Market. And each time she set up her coffee cart, her “girlies” as she calls them, were by her side. “My hair clients are my community, and they helped me get Santa Coffee going then and still help me with Santa Coffee to this day,” Marisa says.

The sense of community Marisa has established with her staff extends also to Santa Coffee’s suppliers. Medium roast Columbian coffee beans come from the Provo-based and Mexicano-owned Pueblo Coffee Co. The women-owned, Portland, Oregon-based Soul Chai provides spice blends for Santa Coffee’s chai lattes. “We bloom and prepare the spices in the traditional way, as Soul Chai intends,” Marisa says. And the matcha used in Santa Coffee’s popular hand-whisked matcha drinks, including its strawberry matcha best seller, is sourced from Ise, Japan by the Japanese-woman owned, Portland, Oregon-based Matcha Freak. “All of our suppliers use responsibly sourced products which makes me feel good about supporting their businesses,” Marisa says. “And they are all very supportive of me. That sense of lifting each other up translates into Santa Coffee and I know people can feel that.”

Last year marked a period of rapid growth for Santa Coffee. “At the peak, we were selling 400 cups per day,” Marisa says. Her business now spans three carts, one each at the Provo and Salt Lake City Farmers Markets, and another cart used for pop-ups, like the five-week stint Melissa spent making and selling drinks at the Patagonia Outlet in Sugar House last October. “Now I am focusing on efficiency,” she says. “I’m considering learning how to roast my own coffee, and maybe, by the end of 2026, opening a brick-and-mortar location.”

Still, the Salt Lake City Farmers Market remains central to her business. “I’ll have a cart at the Salt Lake Farmers Market for as long as I can,” Marisa adds. “The staff and vendors are such an amazing community. I owe a lot of Santa’s growth to that market. That’s where my business has really scaled from.”

Oh La La… so Instagrammable!

And about the name? “Santa means saint in Spanish,” Marisa says with a mischievous smile. “I used to be Mormon and am not a Santa because I drink coffee.”

The Downtown Farmers Winter Market is held on Saturdays through April 18, 2026 at 209 E. 500 South, November 15 to April 18. The market moves to its summer location in Pioneer Park (350 S. 300 West) from June 7 to October 25, 2026, held there on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

It takes a team!