Bobby

I have been interested in opening a community-focused coffee shop ever since I was a teenager looking for a safe place to hang out with friends in my small hometown. I spent the better part of my teenage years booking concerts of local bands in VFWs, Fire Halls, Community Centers, and Coffee Shops. I saw the value that coffee shops have to a community, and was immediately drawn to them. While attending Community College, I helped put together a business plan for a coffee shop, and that was my gateway into the inner workings of owning and operating a coffee shop. While working a Marketing job in Maryland, I started working part time as an opening Barista at a bakery/coffee shop in the mornings before I started my 8 hour workday with my employer. I took that time to learn more about the actual process of brewing coffee and working with a manual espresso machine. Ever since then, I have been obsessed with the idea of opening a coffee shop one day.

Over the years, my partner Sam, our best friend Jason, and I have lived in different areas throughout Pennsylvania and Maryland. However, we felt like we found a home when Sam and I moved to Pittsburgh and Jason moved into an apartment in Millvale. We instantly fell in love with Millvale and began finding community events and areas where we could contribute. In 2021, Millvale was set to hold its first PRIDE Festival, and we saw this as the perfect opportunity to launch our coffee shop. We worked with PRIDE Millvale to set up a table at the festival and gave away hot coffee, cold brew, and lemonade on a 'Pay What You Can' scale. For the following three years, we popped up around Millvale, starting with folding tables in parking lots and eventually moving inside Pittsburgh's first They Bar, "Harold's Haunt."

Since 2021, we have survived without paying ourselves and slowly built enough capital to buy some of the equipment needed for our first full space. With the money from this loan, we will be able to purchase the rest of the equipment needed for our new space and work towards building a runway to be able to pay ourselves a salary. This will allow us to fully focus on the coffee shop and ensure success for years to come!