Facing a cancer diagnosis, husband and wife team behind Babalu's fight to keep cafe open

Cutting through the quiet of Old Town's Oak Street Mall, a couple walked up to Babalu's Cuban Cafe one recent Wednesday morning.

The cafe was serving breakfast, Babalu's owner Frank Jimenez told them from behind the counter, gesturing toward its warmer of breakfast burritos and bright, pastry-lined bakery case.

As they eyed the trays of cream cheese- and fruit-filled pastelitos, Frank's cellphone rang out from the back of Babalu's tidy kitchen. He briefly excused himself to answer it.

"That was Rosa," he later explained as he steamed milk for a pair of cafe con leche drinks for the couple at the counter.

Rosa Jimenez — Frank's wife of 42 years and partner in Babalu's — had called to say her latest scans were finished. Eventually, her doctors would examine them to see how her cancer was responding to recent chemotherapy treatments, Frank explained, walking over to the oven where the customers' pastelitos were warming.

While Rosa, 62, wrapped up the appointment, Frank, also 62, stood by for updates from his post at Babalu's. With his wife facing stage 4 colon cancer — and all the doctor appointments and chemotherapy side effects that come with it — Frank has taken on most of the duties at the cafe in recent weeks.

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It's an abnormal dynamic for the couple, who had worked side-by-side at Babalu's Cuban Cafe since its September 2020 opening until Rosa's cancer diagnosis in May.

For years, Rosa had dreamed of parlaying her passion for baking into a business like Babalu's. Now, she won't entertain the idea of shutting it down, Frank said.

"Believe me, it’s crossed my mind several times,” he added, noting how hard it is to be apart from his wife during her appointments and how different his days at Babalu's are without her by his side.

"But Rosa's like, 'whatever happens, never close the business. Try to keep it going.' "

So, he is.

'You never think it can happen'

For nearly three years, Rosa and Frank's cafe days were comfortably predictable.

They'd arrive to Oak Street Mall at 6 a.m. and toil away behind the scenes, with Frank rolling breakfast burritos and Rosa baking up everything from pastelitos for the morning crowd to fresh sandwich bread for their popular lunch-time Cubanos.

By 8 a.m., as Babalu's opened and its espresso machine hissed to life, its countertop warmer would be filled with burritos and empanadas and its bakery display case would be ready for the day — lined with sweet and savory pastries, sugar-dusted cookies and delicate apple rosettes.

After working in retail for nearly 40 years, Rosa decided to pursue her dream of attending culinary school. In 2019, she and Frank opened Babalu's Cuban Cuisine — a Fort Collins-based food truck named after Ricky Ricardo's signature song in "I Love Lucy."

Later that year, Frank happened upon an empty restaurant suite — formerly Caribbean Food Shack — in Old Town's indoor Oak Street Mall.

While the original plan was to use the space as a commissary kitchen for their food truck operations, Babalu's Cuban Cuisine was sidelined due to mechanical issues. The owner of Oak Street Mall was interested in having a public-facing cafe there, Frank said, so the couple pivoted in that direction — hoping to open Babalu's Cuban Cafe there in early 2020.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened, setting back the cafe's opening date several months.

“We were losing money left and right," Frank recalled. "When we opened, we were in the hole.”

A Coloradoan article on the cafe's September 2020 opening helped bring in more diners, Frank said, and the couple found their rhythm at Babalu's.

It became a regular breakfast and lunchtime stop for Old Town office workers and grew its base of regulars, according to both Frank and Rosa. It also gave Rosa a place to take and sell custom cake orders.

"We were here every day together, we'd go home together, we shared ideas, we shared the happiness, the sadness," Frank said.

They were eventually able to start saving again, with the hope of paying to get their food truck up and running for this summer season.

Then, around October, Rosa said she started experiencing pain. The couple wrote it off at first, but as it worsened it became harder for Rosa to work.

"There were times I'd be in the kitchen, and I would have to go sit down," Rosa said of her worsening symptoms.

She eventually got in to see a doctor and, later, a specialist. By early May, the couple finally knew what they were up against. Rosa had stage 4 colon cancer that had spread to both her liver and lungs, she said.

“Just having to deal with the initial shock, " Frank said. "... You always hear of it happening to other families, but you never think it can happen to yours.”

A new normal at Babalu's Cuban Cafe

Frank and Rosa had to close Babalu's and adjust its hours to make it to her many doctors appointments, and since neither of them had health insurance at the time of the cancer diagnosis, their food truck savings were quickly swallowed up by mounting medical bills.

"(Babalu's) is what we live off of," Rosa said. "If we can't open, we can't make any money and now we have all kinds of bills to pay."

A friend set up a GoFundMe campaign for the couple, which had brought in a little more than $2,000 for Rosa's medical expenses as of Tuesday morning.

"We put everything that we have into this," Rosa said, explaining why she wants to keep the business going. "... It's something that we love to do, and we really want to keep it open, and we want to continue with it."

"Our name’s out there now and we have really good customers," she added, referring to Babalu's loyal band of regulars — including some who have been calling Rosa to check in on her and offering to bring her soup on her sicker days.

Now, Frank said the couple's days are largely built around how Rosa is feeling.

Since starting chemotherapy in May, she hasn't been able to return to the Babalu's kitchen. The treatments have also left her too shaky to take any custom cake orders, Rosa said.

Largely, Frank has been running Babalu's in Rosa's absence. The couple's kids — Victor and Nicole — help where they can both on the homefront and in the cafe, Rosa said. Nicole recently moved her family back to Fort Collins to help her parents.

When the cafe gets busy, the couple's daughter-in-law, Vanessa, who owns Frida Azul — a Mexican boutique across from Babalu's in the Oak Street Mall — will also run over to help Frank, he said.

Knowing Frank would have to take over its daily operations in her absence, Rosa said she had to give her husband a few crash courses in baking.

When asked about it, he chuckled.

"My background is in manufacturing," he said. Even so, while he said his baking skills are nowhere close to Rosa's, "I'm pretty good."

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With their patchwork of family help, Frank has been able to be at Babalu's more in recent weeks. In honor of Rosa's wishes to keep the cafe open, he's hoping to return to more regular hours, which he updates on the Babalu's Facebook page.

“We don’t know from day to day what’s going to happen or what’s coming," Frank said. "We hope for the best, but we just don’t know, and it’s hard. It’s really hard.”

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Couple behind Fort Collins restaurant Babalu's face wife's cancer