Interior design boutique and café calls South Main Street home
“Do all things with love, with amor.”
That’s the business model for Jasmin Sky Peña, who opened interior design store Decor with Amor and Pan Tostado Café with her husband, Mario Esquivel.
“You have to do all things with love because that will reflect on your work,” she said.
Located on Main Street in Georgetown, the couple transformed the old flooring store across from Dos Salsas into a showy boutique and café with their own hands. The boutique opened last September, and the café opened this past March. Although the two are separate businesses, operating in two different rooms, both have the same guiding principles of providing fair-trade, organic, sustainable products made with love, Ms. Peña said.
Decor with Amor started as an online store in 2015 and became a brand in 2019. Ms. Peña works with artisans in Mexico to design and products including decorative dishes, jewelry and wicker purses. In addition to the boutique, Ms. Peña said she felt moved to open a café as a part of her business.
“Coffee and cooking, that’s my love language,” she explained.
Pan Tostado Café also started as an online store. Ms. Peña sold cold brew coffee through Facebook Live, offering doorstep delivery of weekly batches. The business flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic when people couldn’t visit coffee shops. Her intention to expand the menu to include food items has now materialized at the brick-and-mortar location. When the couple relocated from Phoenix in 2022 with their six children, Ms. Peña decided to introduce an aspect of Mexican culture unfamiliar to Georgetown.
“Not everything in Mexico is Tex-Mex,” Ms. Peña said. “There’s a lot more culture in Cabo or Mexico City. There are top tier cafes out there.”
Like a Mexican cafe, she said they have a little bit of everything on the menu. Cuatro is their best selling savory crepe, featuring Black Forest ham, Mexican cheese, spring blend lettuce, chipotle Mexican cream, chili oil, pesto and feta. Their best selling pastry is the Pay De Queso,a traditional Mexican cheesecake.
“We make it here out of scratch,” she said. “It’s my grandmother’s recipe. She recently passed away in May, so I really wanted to bring that in to honor my grandmother.”
Their most popular coffee drink is their horchata latté — a traditional Mexican agua fresca with a shot of espresso. It’s made in house by allowing rice, water and cinnamon to ferment in the fridge overnight. After the fermentation process, they add milk, vanilla and espresso. The latté is topped with a horchata soft topping and dulce de leche— a Mexican caramel sauce.
Despite only being open a couple of months, the business has been doing incredibly well as people are allured by their products, Ms. Peña said.
“The community here has been so open to me, my kids and to the whole concept of Decor with Amor,” Ms. Peña said. “We’re just bringing a little bit of our roots to the Georgetown area to provide a different view of Mexico.”
Last month, she said a plant in front of the store was stolen. She posted a video on social media looking for information, and said the responses of support towards her family were overwhelming.
“They brought us more plants and someone brought us a card,” she recalled. “It said, ‘We appreciate y’all being here and we want you to know that Georgetown is not like that — there’s a great community here and we back each other up.’ When I read that, I caught a knot in my throat. When people come in here, I want them to feel the love and the peace,” she continued. “I didn’t hire professionals to come in here — it’s just me, a mom, with a lot of love for what I do. I just want to share that with the community.”
Visit https://decorwithamor.com for more information.