We recently connected with Aaron Schofield and have shared our conversation below.

Aaron , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I’d first have to say that in your life you should try not to worry about what others have to say about you. Even after you’re gone. It’s the memories that people have of you that matter the most. Because those moments actually happened, They’re not fabricated or embellished they’re real and hopefully bring a smile to that person face. That being said I do what I can to create awesome moments for anyone I come into contact with. Whether you’re my best friend or a stranger at a grocery store, if I can make you laugh or help you pick something up I kinda love to do it. I think that’s ultimately why I landed on the hospitality business for my career. I get to create special moments for people everyday, and build fun traditions like trivia nite or annual holiday parties for everyone to enjoy. So with all this in mind I’d love for people to remember me as someone who just wanted to create everlasting memories and comforting bits of time they can look back on. Someone who left a legacy of weekly traditions behind for others to enjoy for years to come. Someone who gave everything he could to gift the city he lived in a staple they can cherish forever.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Aaron Schofield. If you live in the Phoenix area you may have (or at least I hope you have) heard of a place called Luana’s Coffee and Beer or maybe you’ve seen our mobile shop rolling around your neighborhood. Over the last 7 years I’ve invested basically every second of my time and every dollar I have into the creation of my company. After getting let go at a tech start up all those years ago, I made it a point to never let anyone have that kind of control of my life ever again.I risked every cent, and sold everything I had to purchase my first espresso machine. Took the first cafe job I could get borrowed about 5 grand from my parents, bought a little trailer turned it into a mobile coffee shop, and never looked back. And After about a year of slinging coffee on the side of the road with some of my best friends helping me on their days off. I saw a beautiful girl get out of her car walk up to my window order an iced latte and sit down on the chairs I’d set up for my customers to wait in while I made their very mediocre at the time coffees. Her name was Kylee and she’s now my girlfriend, best friend, business partner and at times my hero. She now runs most of the logistics, scheduling, and everything in between for Luana’s which this year is projecting to do just short of 1 million dollars in gross revenue. In short what I’d like all of our customers or followers to know is that Luana’s is a story of my life Luana herself was my tutu (grandmother in hawaiian) the apostrophe in the logo is a bee and metaphoric reference to my Nana Beatrice. Our menu is a reflection of the different chapters of my life from breakups to falling in love again to my days growing up going to concerts in downtown Phoenix. If anyone takes anything from any of this, what I’d want the people to know is. When you come to Luana’s your coming to see someones life’s story told through a coffee shop. It’s not just some brand with a logo, everything means something and it all comes from the heart of a boy who grew up 15 minutes down the road and wanted nothing more in life than to have a place where he could be himself help others do the same and hopefully find love.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

This is a good story for anyone who maybe just started their first restaurant or cafe. It was a huge lesson learned and one that everyone on that journey will at some point probably have to deal with. So when you first get going at your new cafe one of the obvious things you’ll need is insurance coverage. Well, business insurance for a restaurant is quite a bit different than your typical car or home that you probably already have. This information is very important to understand and take some time to think about, as this almost killed us our first year. It was a beautiful October morning in our little coffee cart. We were about 8 months into our first year of our brick and mortar shop being open. When we got a notification that the business account was in the negative. This was very concerning as we had payroll coming out the same day, which we also knew wouldn’t come out till later in the day. After further review we found that our insurance company had taken out just over 8 thousand dollars from our account the night before. Realizing we figured this was some type of huge mistake. But were also drastically concerned being that it was a Friday and even if this was a mistaken transaction that money wouldn’t be returned the same day nor over the weekend. It turned out it was not a mistake. As back in January when I was setting up the insurance coverage plan I was asked what my business projections for the year were going to be. Mind you this was my first year with my new shop but I knew what the previous cafe in my building had done year over year and I figured we’d do somewhere around 50 perecent more business than they had. So I put the number around 700K sales revenue. This seemed fairly safe and I was told that if we came back with a higher number at the end of the year then we could owe a pretty hefty sum at the end. I figured at best we’d probably be just short of that 700 anyway so it wouldn’t be a problem. Well this was 2020 so we definitely didn’t hit that 700 mark nor did we do anywhere near it, ending the year with just over 350k in sales. But when our insurance company went to review and audit our policy at the end of the year they did nothing more than send some mail to my parents house. Which I don’t live at nor have I for years. They never emailed me or even attempted a phone call. So when they didn’t receive a response to their letters they went ahead and assumed that we did 1 million dollars in business and charged my account the difference in what the premium would be based on that number. It took just over a week to get that money back. With no apologies or urgency my insurance company seemed to treat this really just as a normal business for them. If we didn’t have the loyal and understanding employees we have still till this day we could’ve lost everything and this would have possibly been the death of us.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I opened my first brick and mortar shop in January of 2020 about 15 days before the COVID-19 shutdowns. While so many businesses that had been around for decades or years decided to close and ride it out. We didn’t obviously have that luxury. The day of the shutdowns I took an old can of spray paint and painted a drive thru lane in my parking lot. Immediately pivoting our walk in cafe to a make shift drive thru. I also turned my attention to doing mass orders for hospitals who definitely still needed their caffeine fixes, and created a website to streamline these types of massive orders for anyone or any company that may want to send 100 or more lattes to a hospital here in Arizona. These are just a couple examples of the type of resilience my company and I have had to go through the last couple years, and what it takes these days to stay alive, keep your dreams rolling, and accomplish what some may think is impossible.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.luanascoffee.com
• Instagram: @luanas_coffee_and_beer
• Facebook: @luanas_coffee_and_beer
• Twitter: @luanas_coffee_and_beer
• Youtube: @luanas_coffee_and_beer_and_the_hours_inbetween