Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ashley Rice. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Ashley, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I’m a mother of four kiddos in the house and bonus mom to four more so…. You can say I’m a little busy. As a mompreneur there were times I needed to get things done but the kids didn’t quite get the memo. And there was no real place for us to go be in a safe environment where I could actually let the kids play while I watched, worked, or even played along to help with their gross motor skills and just have fun. So I created The Nest Play Cafe.

This unique hybrid is creating an unequaled sense of community among local families, a current void in the greater Delaware area. The goal of this establishment is to form a high-end town “hub” where families can feel comfortable toting their tots and infants and feel accepted, encouraged, and connected. This is important to me because sometimes being a parent gets lonely. It’s hard to make friends and even socialize when there is a two year old screaming at your leg.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Ashley Rice has worked in the digital marketing and television news industries for over 10 years. She started her career creating the online presence for the Salvation Army Northside Chicago thrift stores which became the industry norm for the Chicago stores and also stores from surrounding states which would request Ashley to train their social media teams to curate the perfect online presence for their locations. Ashley then began to work for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in Chicago curating the national social media for the nonprofit and it’s founder Reverend Jesse Jackson, SR. She likes to say she taught Reverend Jackson how to tweet. After being behind the scenes, Ashley’s career switched to being on the screen as she became a television news reporter working in Missouri, Chicago, and eventually Milwaukee. Once her family moved back to Delaware in 2019, Ashley decided to stop working in television news. She went back to her roots and created ‘Crunchy Rice Media’ an all-inclusive boutique digital marketing brand that now has three independently contracted workers.
During the quarantine, Ashley discovered that she loved homeschooling her children (which would make sense as she comes from a long line of teachers going back to her great-grandmother).
The Nest Play Cafe is an innovative establishment for parents to take their
young children to explore a fun, exciting play area, while they relax or interact with other parents in an upscale café lounge and seating area enjoying organic beverages, and snacks. This unique hybrid creates an unequaled sense of community among local families, a former void in the Middletown & Dover areas. The goal of this establishment is to form a town “hub” where families can feel comfortable toting their tots and infants, and feel accepted, encouraged, and connected.
The main attraction of the play cafe is the public playroom for children 0-6 years old. In each of the play areas, there is a space for non-walkers to crawl, roll around, have tummy time and more with their caregivers gated off from the older children but visible. The main play area is gated off so children cannot leave without an adult’s help so unlike at the outside playground where parents are on high alert while children play, The Nest Play Cafe, is a controlled environment where parents can have a village when it comes to playtime.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

My “side hustle” started during Covid when I decided to stay at home with my children. I created Crunchy Rice Media, a digital marketing boutique. The focus of CRM was to help small businesses with digital marketing from inception of their business creating a business plan or a logo to creating websites for building up their digital presence online. The side hustle, enabled our business to be able to grow and save money in order to sell fund the play café. It’s interesting to me because the digital marketing boutique ended up taking on a life of its own and I had to hire employees because we were doing so well. I’ve always had a background and digital marketing. I started off my career after college working at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Chicago as a Digital Marketing coordinator so when I stoped working as a reporter in TV News, I went back to my roots.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

Beside play time, the business offers space rentals, classes and birthday parties for revenue. We also sell holistic retail items like natural toys, organic clothing and natural body care and gifts. Soon we will Implement a coffee and smoothie bar into our locations as additional revenue.

Contact Info:

• Website: Thenestde.com
• Instagram: Thenestde
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/thenestde
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/company/the-nest-play-cafe
• Instagram: @ashleyricetv