We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Justine Jean Baptiste a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Justine , thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Liv & Mimi’s Play Cafe is named after my daughters. Olivia and Naomi. My girls are only 19 months apart. The idea, passion and drive for our play cafe came during a stressful season of life. I was about 8 months pregnant with my second born, Naomi, and my first born Olivia was an 18 month toddler and she was running circles around me. I wanted and needed a place for my little one to play and run around safely that was contained. I yearned for a place to meet other moms and make friends. There was nothing like this in Albuquerque so our play cafe dream began.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Liv & Mimi’s play cafe is an indoor play space for little ones under the age of 5. We offer a place for parents and caregivers to hopefully rest and find their village and community. There are many places in Albuquerque for kids of all ages to run and play. However these places are not usually toddler friendly. Crawlers and new walkers around the ages of 1 to 3 years old are not always safe in these types of places. Bigger kids are running back and forth not really paying attention to little ones. My toddlers would be trampled and knocked over. My experience in these trampoline park outings and fast food indoor playground were usually very stressful and overstimulating. I wanted to create a safe, low stimulating place for toddlers and their parents and caregivers. Liv and Mimi’s is a small 1500 sq ft space. We only allow 15 kids at a time max per play session. This creates a quieter more intimate play session. We play upbeat instrumental background music to help keep the environment as low stimulating as possible.
We also host birthday parties in our space. Our first 3 months in business our birthday parties were completely sold out. We definitely filled a gap that was needed here in Albuquerque. Our customers love that they don’t have to share the space for their little one’s birthday party. The party rental of our space is private and intimate.
Most large birthday party venues host 6-8 parties at a time and it’s absolute chaos. This is quite the opposite experience at our play cafe.
How’d you meet your business partner?
My business partner is actually my husband, Mardochee. We met in Haiti in 2018. I had been living in Haiti for 4 years doing a variety of different jobs and volunteer positions. I started my journey in Haiti working in an orphanage with young children. I also opened a bakery in a small village and worked for an artisan company who employs deaf men and women and amputees from the 2010 earthquake. My husband and I started dating in the end of 2018 and we were engaged, married and expecting our first born by the fall of 2019. We left Haiti and moved to my hometown Albuquerque, NM just 6 weeks before I daughter was born in December. 19 months later our second daughter, Naomi joined our family in 2021. My husband has been my greatest support and cheerleader. Owning this business together has really strengthened and challenged our marriage in the best ways possible. My husband has a full time job and he still helps with cleaning the play cafe and doing small maintenance when needed too. He leads a music class once a week and he’s not shy to put on a mascot costume for our holiday events. Our girls still haven’t stopped raving about their daddy, THE Easter bunny!
How did you build your audience on social media?
From the moment we got the keys to our rental space I made a quick vinyl sticker with our Instagram handle and stuck it on the front windows. We are located in a small shopping center with other business and the front of our play cafe is all windows. I knew people would be curious as they walked by to the barber shop or coffee and donut shop. I wanted them to look up or instagram page and see the progress we were making. Word spread and we had hundreds of followers before we even opened our doors. We involved the public in our build out process with lots of progress pic and polls. We’ve maintained a great presence on Instagram locally and word of mouth among parent groups is still our best advertisement.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @livandmimisplaycafe
