 I always knew I wanted to open a coffee shop. So I would tell myself, you know, once I become a doctor, once I have money, you know, then I'll open my coffee shop with the money that I have. And then it just kind of dawned on me like, clearly I don't want to be a doctor. I just need to go for what I want to do. Right now we're getting ready to, well we already opened our second location and our first location is kind of seasonal. So we shut that one down for like two months or so. So we're going to reopen that one on Saturday. So it's pretty hectic, but I want to open my third location. I want to move back home to Florida. So I need to find a way to structure the two on Rhode Island or they can run perfectly without me so that I can go back. I want to go to Miami and start a bunch of coffee shops in Miami. That's my goal. It's insane how young you are, yet you're still able to do that. Do you mind like sharing a little bit more about how you got started? Oh, by the way, we're jumping right into the interview because like the stuff that you're sharing with me right now is just so gold right away. And I think that's really the essence of what we're trying to extract is like, hey, what's your personal story? How did you get started? Because I know you can all start from the coffee experience world. No, not at all. No, so originally I went to school to be a doctor. So that was my goal, you know? And I had spent about, I mean, I got a full ride to Northeastern University in Boston. I went there and then when I was a junior, I like had this epiphany that I was like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I don't know what it is, but I know this isn't it. So I got up, I dropped out, I left. And then I told my parents like, I'm moving to Florida. And they were like, what? I'm like, yeah. And like within three days, like I was gone. So you went from being wanting to be a doctor and you're bringing news to your family that, yo, I'm gonna be opening up a coffee shop now. Is that okay? Nope, you just booked it. I didn't even tell them I was opening a coffee shop because at that moment, like, I always knew I wanted to open a coffee shop. So I would tell myself, you know, once I become a doctor, once I have money, you know, then I'll open my coffee shop with the money that I have. And then it just kind of dawned on me like, clearly I don't want to be a doctor. I just need to go for what I want to do. So I left, I had nothing. I had no job, I had a car, but I had no place to live or anything. And I knew two people down in Florida. So I just randomly like went out there. I lived in a house, like a four bedroom house with six people at first. Like that's how it started. And I lived there for a while. I ended up getting a job at Disney World and I like kind of worked my way up. It was a point in time when I was working three jobs. So it was a lot. But I think that's kind of where I learned to work really hard and learned all about the hospitality industry. And that's kind of where I fell in love with it. And I learned more that like, you know, going to a coffee shop, for example, it's not about the, it's not really about the coffee. I mean, it is, but it's about the experience. The experience that you can give people in that moment. And that's what I really learned from being in Florida. And then I just kind of took it with me and I opened my coffee shops with everything I learned. That's insane. Okay, let's slow down a little bit. Like you know that you want to start a coffee shop and that's a really big insight for myself and also one of my best friends, he's actually a dentist. And it's so funny. I asked him, I'm like, he spent 10 years of his life learning to become a dentist and going through all the things and everything later to realize now that he's practicing for two years, he hates his job. And he's like, one day I'm going to make enough money so that I can open up my own coffee shop. That's his mentality. And I'm like, wow, you have so much foresight to actually know that. Hey, why am I waiting until like I'm 50, tired and then I'm opening up a coffee shop of my dreams. That doesn't make sense. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work. And then so you're like, you know what? I'm going to chase my dreams. I'm going to fly down to Florida and I'm going to get a job at Disney World. And that's something that is super cool because I want to know more about your, what did you take away from that experience? Because that's like the top of the top of the world all about the experience. And that's something that no one can copy away from you. And that's, I think that really plays into the success that you have so far with your coffee shop. Tell me a little bit more about that experience. So, well, before I had left, I had gone through a lot of personal things, right? Like a medical malpractice thing that happened to me. It was a lot of stuff. So I was in a very depressive sort of state of emotion. And so when I made the initial decision to move, it was based on, I need to find myself. I need to find what makes me happy who I truly am as a person. And I had done a marketing internship at Disney World. And I love the idea that Disney had. You know, that was just this experience, this, you know, bringing this childhood sort of nostalgia back into like your daily life. And I love that. I loved everything they taught all of their core beliefs. So I was like, well, what better place for me to work and to learn everything than the number one company in the world. So I went and that's the first place I went to to go get a job. And it was the best place because it taught me everything. You know, at Disney, you work hard. If you work for Disney, if anybody's ever worked for Disney, they've worked hard. Sometimes 70 hours a week. I mean, it's intense. Yeah, it's a lot. And especially if you're any kid on the college program that's done it has worked like a lot of hours. So like working there kind of taught me more about like the experience. I mean, we brought out great food and, you know, if something went wrong, we were automatically, you know, comping it. Yes, we'll get you another one. You know, how are you feeling? Calling the little girls princesses. Those are all of the things that I learned at Disney World is what I brought into my business now. So even now we have, for my business, we have these crazy milkshakes that we do and kids just go crazy for it. And it's so wonderful to see this little kid with this like big smile on their face or they're watching us make this milkshake. And it's almost bringing a little piece of magic into the day. And that's what we bring with the milkshakes, but we also bring that with the food to the adults. So our food is a little bit different. It's more like artisan upscale. You wouldn't normally expect it at a cafe. So the way it's presented to you is like a gourmet sort of restaurant. And we bring a little piece of like magic into everything that we do. So I guess what I took away from Disney was your customers are number one. And what they feel while they're inside of your location is what's most important. That's what they'll take with them moving forward is what they felt like when they were there. Yeah. It's something that I always preach about and the idea of experience and the idea of how things make you feel is always easy to preach. But actually to execute is a different story. It's hard. Tell me more about how to execute that. And then we're going to go backtrack on like when you first started. Like I really want to dive into like how do you deliver that experience? Is it something that you intentionally do? And what's that? How do you do it? So when I first started, I had tried to do that but the execution wasn't there. So it was definitely trial and error. It's not like this magic thing that's going to happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard work. And when I first started, I didn't have the right thing. So what I did was I would look at, okay, well, what do the customers want? What are they looking more of? We would look at our reviews, for example, what are they complaining about? Or what are they raving about? And that's kind of like what I did was I listened to the people. That's what's important. Because you can have this concept that you absolutely love and you're like, yes, it's going to work. But if the people aren't seeing your vision, then there's something lacking with your vision. So you have to change it a bit. Sometimes we're so stuck in, this is our vision, but vision can be flexible. So I think it's important to listen to your customers. And that's kind of what we did. And I did a lot of traveling and I did a lot of soul searching for the business in regards to what does this brand mean? What do I want people to feel when they're here? And what do I want them to take away when they leave? And that's kind of what I worked on for a full year. We did a full renovation. I went back and I changed our entire menu. I changed our entire look on the inside. And I really, really tried to implicate that structure of the experience while you're here as opposed to just another hometown coffee shop. I love that. It's something that a lot of people miss the mark with because they think it's all about the coffee. They think it's about, hey, the price point. They think it's about, hey, what is IG friendly? Yeah, it's really about how you make people feel because if I were to ask you, hey, two weeks ago, you ate at this coffee shop, how is the food? Majority of the time you don't remember the food, but you remember the experience. And that really is the key. So definitely you hit the nail on its head 10 times and over. Tell me more about when you first started your coffee shop. It must be a lot of hard work that the fear to overcome that and to actually be like, wow, let's do it. Like that's a big step and a big commitment. How did you feel at that time? So originally I was planning on starting this coffee shop in Florida, but then Hurricane Irma hit and everybody had to be evacuated of Florida. So I took like a seven hour flight back home and that's when I found the location here in Newport, Rhode Island. And I fell in love with it. The street itself is very busy. So I was like, you know what? Maybe this is where I'm supposed to start it. So that's kind of where I started, but I didn't really, a lot of my connections because I had spent so much time in the hospitality industry in Florida, all of my connections were in Florida. So that was very hard because all I had here was my best friends, which were busy, getting married, having babies. And then I had my little sister that was 12 with my brother that was like 20 at the time. So it was pretty difficult, but they were my first employees actually. Wow, how long ago was this? This was three years ago. Wow. Oh, I mean, if it wasn't for them helping me, I don't know if we would even be here. We all kind of learned together and I had never made a latte. I barely drank lattes before I started it. I was never really into anything, but I was big into baking and food. That was my thing. And so that's kind of what I tried to push the most was let's do what I'm good at, let's do a lot of baking and food. But it was a struggle at first. It was hard. I was working 17 hours a day because our hours were so long. We were like 7 a.m. to like 9 or 10 p.m., but we'd get a pop. So we wouldn't get out of there after cleaning until 11. And there was a point in time within like my first year, I thought to myself, okay, if I bartend, you know, and I leave my store at like four, go bartend, I can make 400 in a day and pay my employee for a week, right? So I thought maybe this was a great idea. So then I got a bartending job. And that was awful. I don't recommend that to anybody because then I was running my business during the day that I would leave and go bartend till two in the morning. And then I got so tired because I left 30 minutes away, I couldn't drive home. So then I ended up buying a blow-up mattress and sleeping inside of my building, leaving to go take showers at Planet Fitness, coming back to work with my employees to do it all over again. And it just did not work out. So there was a lot of trial and error, a lot of sacrifices, sleeping under my espresso machine. I mean, it was like hard for stuff. But I'm like a firm believer that like if you're a business owner and you're not willing to sacrifice literally everything that you have, then you're not meant to be what you're doing. It's not your passion then. So it's my passion. So I will sacrifice everything I have. I'm fricking speechless. Wow. So you actually had to go bartend, just that way you can make enough money to pay for your staff and to keep this thing going. Right. And wow, that's commitment. And truly it is the passion. And I think like, as we all know hospitality industry, margins are a lot slimmer than any other business models out there. So definitely it has to come from a place of love and passion and enjoyment. And I'm pretty sure for you, a big one is, and I'm now putting words in your mouth is like seeing the magic in people's eyes, right? Like when you deliver that experience. I don't know, is that right for you? Yeah, I mean, it was, because physically you're tired. Physically I was exhausted. It was 17 hour long days for me and barely any sleep. So my knees were hurting, my feet were hurting. But then when I'm in the store, even my employees would be like, how do you have so much energy? They couldn't understand. But it's because the energy doesn't come physically for me. It was emotionally and mental energy from being surrounded by my passion and seeing my creations and the things that I had dreamt, like only dreamt of becoming a reality and me being to take that, like being able to take that dream and that vision that at that time was like three months prior was only a dream in my head. And now I'm standing in it and now I'm creating it. And now I'm giving my dream to somebody in hand. And that's really what sparked all of that energy for me was being able to take my creativity and seeing it bring joy to someone else. I mean, how can you not be happy, you know? It was just great. It's insane to see how you look so like, kinda you look so well put together and you look pretty and it's like, oh, I can't imagine you doing this for 17 hour days and that kind of commitment is just insane. So for you guys, I think it's because part of your passion is to bake and create food. That has really helped you have that higher average order value because a lot of mistakes that cafe owners make, they really focus on just the art of coffee. And they think that, you know, I'm gonna charge another dollar on the art of coffee and that would be able to make the business. But for you, it's really about the food within that cafe. And has that helped you tremendously with getting the average order value up? And do you mind sharing what that is and kind of like tips on that? Sure, so at first we didn't have a big extensive menu. We really had, I would say maybe max, like seven items between breakfast and lunch put together. And our average ticket number was pretty low. I remember it was like maybe $9 per, you know, that's very low because no matter how and mind you, we were working harder for the money because now we didn't have that many choices of food. So all of our money was coming from drinks. So we would get slammed and work felt like we worked ourselves to the bone for minimal amount of money because it was all drinks. So now what I did was I created a completely different menu. I created it so that it's more upscale so that it's worth the money that you're paying and you can't find them anywhere else. So now our average ticket price is double over double back. Oh, for sure. Yeah, so I mean, now we make the money that we made back then, we make it so much quicker and we're like, really? We're already hitting that number? Because now there's so many choices and yeah, pricing is everything because how you can't price a coffee for $8, you just can't, you know? And people love variety. I don't wanna go someplace for a coffee and then someplace for a sandwich and then someplace for, no. Like people want a one-stop shop. People are busy, people are building their own lives, make it easy for them, but make it quality. That's my biggest thing is it's worth it. Are you a vegan? You can come to my store. Are you gluten-free? You can come to my store. Are you a regular meat eater? You can come to my store, you know? Like, are you a kid? You want a milkshake? You can come to my store. We have literally everything. But we do it together in the brand. So, cafeology is based upon the idea of being in the present moment, being free-spirited and, you know, just kind of letting go of the world. So when you come into cafeology, you know, our logo is the hummingbird, which means enjoying the sweet, simple pleasures of life. And that's what we want when people come into our store. So we're very family-oriented. We're very all-inclusive and we're very big on women-owned businesses. So we support women-owned businesses. We do a lot of consignments with women-owned businesses. Even from like our drinks, we do Luluna Kombucha, which is a local company. We do our teas from a local woman here. We do our, we get a lot of our vegan desserts, including free desserts from another local woman-owned business. So it's very like sort of supporting the community in general, but that's kind of what cafeology is. And we started with these crazy milkshakes. That's how it started. And we just evolved, evolved over the time to being very gourmet food, gourmet milkshakes, gourmet desserts, you know, but doing it fast, efficient and bringing quality at the same time as we are bringing quantity. And I think that's what's lacking in a lot of businesses. You either get quality or you get quantity, but you never get both. So- It's saying, because when I did the research on you and saw about like your food offering, like I'm like, holy crap, this is all food that I would actually pay and- Yeah. And it is that good. And it's super, super, super, like you focus so much on your aesthetics and it's so on point, because really that's where the experience comes from and also the value, right? At the end of the day, it's really about the perceived value when it comes to food, right? I think it's about how you package it, how you actually get it before and the presentation and everything really just adds up to the whole experience. So I think like a really, really great job. I wouldn't be able to actually, I was trying to find holes to poke into your cafe. And quite frankly, I couldn't find much holes because I'm like, if I were to create a cafe, I would be something that I would create myself, but obviously within my style and within my own voice. And it's something that I think a lot of people need to understand that when you're creating anything, when you're starting any business, it really comes down to your own values. Yeah. Identifying your values and being able to exert that into your business, align that, and then that's how you connect with long-term customers, your loyal fans that support you over and over again. And that's the reason why I think it's so brilliant for you to support woman-found business because that's what you truly believe in and the people actually believe in that purpose, they're there to support you and the whole community as well. And that's why when I was looking at the reviews and everything, I'm like, wow, you have a very strong knitted community. So good job on that. Now that you opened it up for a year and a half and then you opened your second one? Yeah. So it was about almost two years for the first one because the first year was really just all learning and mistakes. The second year was when I realized the business was not a reflection of myself because when I first started it, I just kind of did with what I had. And I was like, let's just get this going. You know, it's taking too long, let's just open the doors. I never really had a chance to sit down and actually form it to my personality. So the second year, we completely did a renovation and it ended up being creating like, you walk into the store and you know, oh yeah, this is definitely Draya's store, you know? So it's great. So now we're on to our third year. We have our second coffee shop opening right now. So I'm working again more than I normally do just because now I had to supplement for the second store which is amazing though, which is great. It's a huge location. It's like triple, almost triple the size of what we have right now. But we're doing some exciting things with that place too. We're doing pop-up shops. We're doing, I rent out the kitchen space to other vendors who need it because we have a cottage law here which means other are not allowed to do it at home. So I rent that out. So that's kind of like how I like learned how to make money to pay overhead expenses without actually having to sell anything. And that's huge. So good, you're so smart, such a great entrepreneur. Yeah, thank you. So we even rent, like we have a huge wrapper on porch. And right now I've been renting, obviously we're not gonna rent pop-up for food but I rent pop-up for local, you know, almost like Etsy. Like a local, you know, people who do crafts. So I had a little girl, she does like candles and she does like soaps and bars and whatnot. So I love that she's a young girl, entrepreneurial spirit. I wanna support that. So I let her sell her products on our patio. I have another company who does dog bandanas. So I let them also rent out our patio and do that. So it's kind of cool because we charge about like $25 an hour. We don't really do anything. We just set up a table for them. She ended up making $150 in two hours. I made $50 for doing nothing and we all kind of won. So it's a really good little concept. And if like other restaurant owners have the space, I say, do it, you know, I'm working on renting our parking lot out for food truck vendors. So now once a month I rent out the parking lot and we have a food trucking event. Not only does it bring people to my spot so they know where my spot is, but it gets them money too. So and I don't do anything for it at all. Oh. So it's literally so great. And so I do the same thing with my new part location. You know, parking is all full of new port. So I own two parking spots that come with my store. I rent those out. I make money from that too. So you just have to know how to make the right, you just have to know how to work it, you know? I love that. You're like so creative. There's so great everywhere. It's insane. I think like for the people that are, how can people find you to follow you and your progress and your new location? Do you wanna let us know how they can find you? Yeah. So our Instagram handle is at Cafeology and capital K-A-F-F-E-O-L-O-G-Y, which really just means the science of coffee because I went to school for biology. With a pre-med. The internet is coming out, right? Yeah, right. So while my parents were complaining saying like, well, what are you gonna do with your degree? I said, okay, I'll name the store Cafeology. There you go. We'll use the ology somehow, you know? But my personal Instagram is Andrea Natalia CEO, which is A-N-D-R-E-E-A-N-A-T-A-L-I-A-C-E-O and that's on Instagram. And I post a lot of stuff for business on there as well and a lot of inspirational personal things, but yeah. Definitely. We will leave into the show notes right below and I'm so thankful that you're willing to share your experience with us and really kind of the nuggets, so many nuggets that you're dropping with us and I'm pretty sure that our audience would be able to find it super valuable and inspiring at the same time. So definitely go give her a follow, guys. Once again, thank you so, so much for coming onto this interview. I will see you guys very, very soon.