We were lucky to catch up with Ansumana Bangura recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ansumana, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The story behind Yoppa Stand and what it’s focused on has evolved over time. Initially, it started off as just a way for me to bring quality drinks to my friends so we can enjoy our time together during the pandemic. We graduated in 2020 into the global pandemic and the first thing that we had to deal with was “How are we going to celebrate our graduation when everything is shut down and we have to social distance?” To solve that problem I asked myself: “How can I bring this thing that’s new to us (i.e. drinking alcohol) and how do we now do it in this new world?” But as Yoppa Stand has grown and I’ve seen it go from a lightning bolt of an idea to a hobby to a bubbling business, that mission has grown too. Our mission means a lot to us because as me and my friends had fun, I’ve thought why doesn’t everybody deserve this? Why doesn’t everybody deserve access to quality drinks and quality times with quality people? That’s a meaningful mission to me because creativity and expression and having fun are such critical parts of our humanity that we all deserve to engage in. If people can do that through Yoppa Stand, even better – because we care about quality to the highest degree. We want to make sure that, if nothing else, this is a safe space where you can come and be your most authentic self and have the most fun that you want to have. We want everyone to come and know that, no matter what, you can be you.

Ansumana, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi! My name is Ansumana Bangura, but all of my friends, all of my family, everybody that I love calls me Ansu. I started Yoppa Stand because coming out of college I knew that I wanted to be entrepreneurial. I had spent so much time working with brilliant and creative people that I knew I wanted to use my skills, my work ethic, and my time on this planet to try and build something for people that would add value to their lives and give me purpose at the same time. In a way, Yoppa Stand is this perfect transaction where I’m doing good for the world and doing good for myself via challenging myself and making the most of the gifts that I’ve been given.
Yoppa Stand is an alcohol catering company based in Brooklyn, NYC. We sell bottled alcoholic cocktails, ultimately with the goal of serving people with the good quality drinks and fun they deserve, all at an affordable price and in spaces where they can be their most authentic selves. I would actually say, more specifically, we’re not solving a problem in so much as we are creating spaces and supporting the creation of spaces. I think this is what sets Yoppa Stand apart because, truly, it is Yoppa Stand that is the differentiator and not me. I think what sets Yoppa Stand apart is that we’re all about quality. Through the very nature of how this brand has been built, quality has to come first or else we’re lost. It shows up in our drinks in terms of working hard to make the best quality cocktails that are possible. It shows up in our logo and it’s bright, beautiful, fun-reminiscent colors. It shows up in our marketing, promotion, and social media presence and how we only aim to post and promote authentically. Most of all, it shows up in how we support and show up for the community of creatives that surround us.

Yoppa Stand is special. We know that our drinks are lovely and good quality. They’re a great bang for your buck since they’re strong yet tasty and drinkable. Every time somebody drinks them, they always remark to us that 1) the drinks taste great, 2) they make me feel good, and 3) they are having fun drinking them. But here’s another thing that sets us apart: I think that we’re not complacent to just have good quality drinks, but we also want to pair our great quality drinks with great quality fun. A long time ago, we learned a lesson that taught us the philosophy that the right drink can make a good event great and a great event phenomenal, but it can never make a bad event good. Since then, we’ve always wanted to take our quality cocktails and put them in the presence of quality, fun events where people can be their most authentic selves. Our focus isn’t just helping people have fun; it’s to elevate the fun that they’re having so they can have their most authentic fun all the time. That’s what separates us. It’s not just about the drink. It’s about the drink in the best context.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

My favorite marketing story is the Nectar of Novato ad by far. When it comes to Yoppa Stand, I care a lot about showcasing and marketing the Yoppa Stand experience. What that means is showing people how you would feel, what you would enjoy, and what your nights out or days in with your friends and loved ones would be if you were drinking Yoppa Stand.

So! For backstory, the Nectar of Novato ad includes three of my favorite people in the world and it took LOTS of work to make it happen.

The whole ad was inspired by a joke someone made. Nectar of Novato is a tequila-based, melon-based cocktail that is green; so, the first time somebody saw it, they joked “Oh, my God, is this kale? Ha ha”. Fun fact: I actually hate kale. I don’t like the way it tastes one bit. Never put a kale in my smoothie. Never want kale anywhere around me, just spinach please. But that joke landed with me, I thought it was really funny. Maybe three or four months later, I had this funny idea of “What if I took that joke and spun it into an ad where I have lost my mind? I’ve made a great drink, but I’m going to ruin it by putting my least favorite ingredient in it to make it, quote unquote, healthy.” Once I had that idea, I storyboarded it, wrote the script, and casted some friends to star in it. And it was perfect to me. Then, came life.

There’s a local smoothie shop where I wanted to record it because it’s MY go-to smoothie shop. “Why not support the people in my community?” was my thought process. I went there and initially they said, “No, we’re not going to let you do that.” I was initially confused as to why, because in my head, it was just a harmless ad that could get everybody brand visibility. But to them, they felt like “it needs to make sense for us or you need to be able to do something for us”. But then we kept speaking and I think that the owner of the store realized that I wasn’t just trying to shoot just any skit or ad, but he realized my passion for the brand, for the people I was trying to market to, for the concepts that I was trying to bring to life, and most importantly, for the larger vision that I was realizing for Yoppa Stand. I think when he realized that, he saw a little bit of himself in me. So, he said, “Just off of the strength of how much you care about this, I would actually love to give you the space. Let me know the logistics. Let me know when and I’ll let you come and do it.” And ever since then, it’s just been very, very obvious to me that Yoppa Stand is a community organization. Yoppa Stand is a community-based… I wish there was a more intellectual and cleverer and smarter way to say it, but it’s just community-based.

The moral of that story to me was that community is everything to me and Yoppa Stand is emerging as a platform where community can show up for each other and create fun stuff through! I love my community so much – I’m very grateful for how effortlessly they inspire me to build out Yoppa Stand, and I’m happy that the products of Yoppa Stand can inspire some people to create too.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

So, the initial capital that I used to start this business was a dollar and a dream. I funded all of Yoppa Stand initially out of my own pocket just to see if it would work. I’m a scientist by nature, and I cared a lot to see if I was actually providing value to customers. Not just “I want to be an entrepreneur” or “I have ego to think that I’m good at something”; I wanted to know I could add value. So, before I was willing to take out business loans or ask people to invest or like beg my family for money, I wanted to see if this was something that people want. That’s why I just funded it out of pocket and took the losses. To manage it and keep track of the business, I set up a system: I would charge my credit card only for an event. I would keep track of the receipts and then I would keep track of all of the revenue I would gain from an event. Then, I’d use that revenue to pay off my credit card; not my entire credit card, but just the sum of receipts’ amounts. If I had any profit from an event, I would cash it out of an ATM and I would keep it in a piggy bank. I did that for about a year and a half.

Then I realized that Yoppa Stand was gaining enough traction. The fact that I was able to do that for about a year and a half showed me that Yoppa Stand was satisfying enough people to prove that it is a feasible business. The next step was to see how far this can go. So, then I eventually formed an LLC and made the business bank accounts in which I had an intricate system of those bank accounts. I stopped using my personal credit card to finance Yoppa Stand and then started using a business credit card.

Now after a couple of years of doing that, I’ve recognized that Yoppa Stand has shown itself to be a pretty formidable force that people care about and gives value to them. So, now you find Yoppa Stand at a metamorphosis where we are going forward and trying to raise capital to go to the next level by relying on our community. What we’re doing is working with a company called Honeycomb Credit – a platform regulated by the SEC that gives small businesses like Yoppa Stand the ability to access funding from everyday people who want to invest in our business and other local businesses. We’re asking people to invest in what we are building and help us get to the next level. As we are successful, we will repay those people with interest. We’re trying to use community-based investment model to secure our next round of funding and show up for our community even better.

I chose this route with HoneyComb Credit because I wanted to make sure that the people that were investing in this company cared about this company. There were opportunities to get angel investors who just wanted to put together money to see if this could work. But those people weren’t invested in the success of Yoppa Stand; they just wanted to make return on their investment. This opportunity through Honeycomb Credit allows us to strike a duality. On one hand, the people that invest naturally care about seeing their investment be successful, but they also want to see Yoppa Stand be successful. Those things collide in a great way of : 1) You financially want to see this brand succeed, 2) You emotionally want to see this brand succeed, and 3) You want to see this brand succeed because if it does, it creates more spaces for you to have fun, for you to party, and for you to express your most authentic self. This route feels like the best way for us to put our money where our mouth is.

All of these years we have inherently but quietly and privately thought about Yoppa Stand as a community organization. This mode of raising investment capital allows us to say “Yoppa Stand is a community organization and it is now formally funded by the community.” Thus, we will be both inherently motivated and financially motivated to show up for our community. We’re inherently motivated because we care about our community and we want to see our community thrive. But we are financially motivated because our community are the investors who have invested in this LLC, for which we now have a financial obligation to re-pay them for. It’s the best of both worlds. We want to show up for our community in this way because of our business and its mission. But now we also have an obligation that formalizes that; it really guarantees that we’re always going to show up for our community. The purpose of this raise is to gather enough money such that we can get a liquor license to take everything that we’ve been doing to the next level. As much as Yoppa Stand has touched a lot of people, we’ve had to be very strategic to be very, very intentional and work very, very small. And we’ve seen the potential for this brand to be bigger, bring more people together, and have more fun. Raising this capital is really designed to set the groundwork or better set the cornerstones for that to happen. We’ll be using the capital for 1) getting a liquor license, 2) getting a manufacturing studio that we can dedicate to just building out Yoppa Stand, and last but not least, 3) having a marketing budget such that we can host events, support events, and promote the brand in as many creative, fun, and unique ways that allow people to understand the Yoppa Stand experience and bring more patrons into the Yoppa Stand experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yoppastand.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yoppastand/

Image Credits

Image Credits to Giovanni Jackson & Lens of Her LLC