Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Arielle Nelson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Arielle, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
In 2019 I seen a post where a young women was eating cereal in a “cereal restaurant” and I was thinking Ike, this looks cool, where is this and What is this?! After researching for hours on Ig and Google, I found out it was called a Cereal Bar and apparently it was common throughout the world. I knew this was definitely something I needed to introduce to Cincinnati. Instantly, I started to reminisce about waking up super early on Saturday morning, eating my favorite bowl of cereal, and watching Saturday morning cartoons for hours! That’s when it hit me, why can’t we enjoy a day like this 7 days a week! That’s why I created Saturday Morning Vibes Cereal Bar. What makes us unique is we’ll carry a wide variety of milk, toppings and cereals. The concept is to make you feel like a kid again. At SMV you can relax in our chill vibe, watch your favorite cartoons and play classic electronic and board games.
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?
Hi, my name is Arielle Nelson and I’m the Co-owner of Cincinnati’s first black owned cereal bar. I was born in Avondale but I grew up in Price Hill in a single parent household with my Mom and 3 siblings. My background includes Retail sales, Retail Management, Customer Relations, 9 years of Sole Proprietorship and a graduate of MORTAR.
What I’m most proud of is how strong and determined I am, and our traction to date which includes the following:
o Pop-ups at various venues from 2020-present
• African American Chamber of Commerce
• Paloozanoire
• Cincinnati Ballet
Second Sundays on Main
• Findlay Market
Corporate Boutique
Media Features
Business Courier
City Beat’s Top 50 Restaurants You Should Have Tried By Now
Fox 19
Channel 5 News
I want people to know that I’m not just opening a cereal bar, I’ want to create a safe, fun place, that can bring people together.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
My business partner and I met while working together at American Airlines. We had bigger plans, We decided to come together as a team on another project in 2018, but decided against that. I ran the idea of a cereal bar across him in 2019 and the rest was history.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
We barely had initial capital. We had about $10,000 and a business plan. We applied at several banks but was denied. We final found a source called ECDI that provided funding for small businesses. Another route we took was crowdfunding.
Contact Info: