We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kevin Rucker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kevin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I remember it was December 2021 and my partner (Yari) and I were going through a rough year. She had lost her grandpa and I lost 2 of my brothers that year. Also, we both weren’t particularly thrilled with the whole corporate 9-5 lifestyle. We started to realize that life is too short to not be doing something we were passionate about, so I sat with her one night and just asked her what would she do if she could start her own business. She said she would love to open a coffee shop. She always had a passion for coffee but never really thought she could open her own shop. I simply said to her “Let’s do it”. My background is in Business Operations and Process Improvement and was never really into coffee but decided to learn with her. We ordered a prosumer espresso machine for our apartment about a week later and our friend Will came all the way to NY from Philly to train us on how to use the machine and get the most out of our beans. He also showed us how to froth milk for lattes and cappuccinos. We had also told our friend Donnell about our idea and he immediately said he’s in and wrote us a check to buy shares in the company. By January we had formed our LLC, had some training and gained a partner. Now it was time to raise money to really make this idea a reality. We launched a crowdfunding campaign on indiegogo to raise money as well as got an SBA loan using our business plan. It took us a couple months to find a space and landlord we liked but we found a perfect fit here in Downtown New Rochelle. We signed our lease in May 2022 and continued to work with baristas to really perfect our craft. That all seems like a lot perspective but that was just beginning and was all stuff I had experience with. We needed to hire contractors as well as work with the building department and health department for all of our permits, it took us about 8 months to physically open our shop which was very difficult for us. I remember us just spending time in our empty space just to fill it with love while we waited for approvals and work to be done. We will definitely do things a bit differently whenever we decide to expand and we now have that experience to make things easier next time. During our buildout phase we also did a bunch of pop ups, sold merch, catered corporate events and just did as much as we could to further our coffee knowledge and keep our business afloat. It was a surreal experience when we finally opened our doors and were actually able to serve our community. To actually see that idea we had 13 months prior become a reality was just a beautiful moment for us all.

Kevin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Kevin Rucker, my experience is in business operations management. I’ve spent my entire career finding the most efficient and cost effective ways to get things done. As an MBA, I am an expert budgeter and I handle the finances and backend operations for Casaroma Cafe. It has always been a dream of mine to start a business from scratch using the techniques that I have fine tuned over the years. In addition to my professional accomplishments, I have a passion for building communities and creating environments for people to collaborate. Building a coffee shop from scratch has been my greatest accomplishment. It has really pushed my limits and forced me to use every skill I have. We really created an environment where people can let whatever they’ve got going on go and have some of the best coffee they’ve ever tasted.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Getting our team to buy in to our mission has been a game changer for us. There’s a lot that goes into actually reaching that point and it starts with our hiring process. We don’t spend much time looking at what skills candidates have. We are more focused on what they are interested and their personality. We feel we have a pretty strong training program here and if we find a candidate with personality traits that fit our mission, we will happily train them on the actual work they’ll be doing day to day. We also look for people that are looking to grow and do more with themselves. If they have other skills outside of their daily coffee shop tasks it’s a big plus as well as we have a lot of connections outside of the coffee industry and often introduce our team to experts in fields that they are interested in. I don’t think there is any one thing you can do to boost morale for your team long term, it has to be in the DNA of your organization.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We were actually able to self fund about 60% of our business by leveraging our savings and retirement accounts. For the rest of the money we had a few different sources. We had got an SBA Loan, we crowdfunded, got a loan from family members and we got a couple credit lines/credit cards from banks. None of these outside funding sources would be possible without a solid credit score and well written business plan with business projections.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Casaromacafe.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/casaromacafe
• Facebook: Facebook.com/casaromacafe
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/casaroma-cafe-new-rochelle?osq=Casaroma+Cafe

Image Credits
We took all photos submitted