Customers head to Ventura Cafe for Kobe Bryant coffee

VENTURA, Calif. - A new Ventura Italian restaurant is serving a special type of coffee. It is one that comes with a photo image, and many customers are requesting images of NBA legend Kobe Bryant.

It’s something you don’t see everyday. Coffee with images on top, including pictures of the late great Kobe Bryant.

Immigrant Son is serving up these unique and sentimental drinks.

Alessandro Tromba is the owner of Immigrant Son Cafe. He says the spot just opened this past New Year's Day.

“The machine that we implemented is a really forward thinking idea where you can send any picture from your cell phone to our machine and then it burns into a cappuccino or a latte, so it has been a lot of fun,” said Tromba.

Tromba says the moment the news broke about the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and 8 others, requests for images of the NBA star poured in.

“To be honest we can not take a lot of credit for the Kobe Bryant thing,” said Tromba. “We credit our customers for thinking of that because they started sending in picture dedications of Kobe to our machine, and what really struck me is that we get charged every time we use it and that gets passed on to our customers. They are paying to do images of Kobe Bryant. And I do not mean one or two, we are probably near 100 of them.”

Originally from Italy, Tromba says Bryant was a big name in their household since the NBA All Star also grew up there. He says Bryant's death is a day he will never forget.

“It was one of those few moments in my life I will never forget where I was because we were so busy in here,” said Tromba. “It was standing room only and in this day and age with the technology you can tell all at once what happened. Everyone's phone started going crazy. The two TVs we had one started broadcasting it, and people were crying in their food. It was horrible.”

And now customers are flocking in to honor Bryant. Susie Lara from Ventura saw the lattes on NewsChannel 3 and made the trip.

“We have all just been really heart broken and shocked with the news and I just wanted to have a little something,” said Lara.

“There was two beautiful girls over there a couple of days ago and they didn’t take one sip of the coffee,” said Tromba. “Even when they left the cup was still full and they had tears in their eyes. It was really sweet.”

Immigrant Son Cafe is located at 543 E Main Street in Ventura. They are open every day from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m.