We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lisa Boyle. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lisa below.

Lisa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

We opened the Chocolate Cafe in September 2007 and it’s taken over 15 years to become an “overnight” success. :) Shortly after we opened, the Great Recession of 2008 kicked in and nearly cost us everything. It took us years to dig out from that. I think one of the main reasons we didn’t quit in the early years was we thought it would be way more expensive to quit than keep on going! We started as a chocolate store with just a few food options, but we quickly realized that soups, salads, and sandwiches were needed to keep us afloat. Today: we have over 40 sandwiches on our menu, and that doesn’t include the soups, salads, brunch options, drinks, and desserts. We do as much off-site catering as we do in-house.
One of the biggest decisions we made was to make ourselves available for delivery. We made a decision in 2016 to really focus on deliveries because we found so many young customers were really into that. Fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic kicked in, and we were comfortable with deliveries and we knew how to do it. It put us way ahead of the game.
We also took another big risk during the pandemic – we opened a second store where we do all of our baking and chocolate making. It’s been very eye-opening; so many business owners say it and I believe it now: I don’t think there’s anything tougher than that 2nd store. It exposes your weaknesses on every level. It has split my time and shown me how much of our process was not up to par. It’s been very challenging and there are times I wonder: do we have a brand? Is this a strong enough concept?

Lisa, 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?

I started in television as a producer after I graduated from Ohio State. My first producing job was in South Bend, Indiana where I got to know the owner of the South Bend Chocolate Company. After I moved back to Columbus, he and I kept in touch and he wanted us to open a Chocolate Cafe franchise in Columbus. My husband and I weren’t interested at first, but we owned a video store and we knew that the industry would not last forever so we bought a franchise, then we bought a building and we opened in 2007. In the early years, we had a small menu and we focused on candies and ice cream. But over the years, we have grown our menu, expanded our drinks, and focused on catering, corporate events and weddings. We are a casual restaurant, but we always have kept the focus on our customers.
When I think about our cafe, I am most proud of the challenges we have faced. We endured the recession about 6 months after we opened and then years later, we gutted our way through the pandemic. We have stayed committed to providing an upbeat environment and good food for our customers.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When we opened our Cafe in 2007, my youngest sister was on my opening team. She was 13 years younger than me and she went through those very tough early years with me. She was an integral part of my staff until 2016, a week before Christmas, when she passed away as a result of a car accident. She left behind her two-year old son. Her death devastated my father, who passed away two months after her. It was a harrowing time. The situation was so difficult for my staff… it is very tough when a co-worker who led the team and the shifts is suddenly gone. But we stayed open and focused… it was probably the only thing that got me through. I stayed laser focused on my staff and my customers, knowing that my sister and father would want me to.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

This has been such an important part of my business. I found early on that it’s important to maintain what I call a “high level of positivity.” Negative people project a negative vibe and I believe you can feel that kind of vibe as soon as you enter a business. I talk about it obsessively during the interview process. I assure staff that they can approach me to talk about any issues they may be having so we can work on trying to solve them but they are not, under any circumstances, to take it out on our customers. Ever. I have found that people really respond well to when you’re trying to keep a place happy and positive. And that doesn’t mean I don’t understand when we have a bad day. Those kind of days are part of life. But I don’t accept us taking it out on other people or behaving inappropriately or bad mouthing each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: chocolatecafecolumbus.com
• Instagram: @chocolatecafecolumbus
• Facebook: @chocolatecafecolumbus
• Twitter: @chocolatecafe

Image Credits
Kendra Bosse