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

Naomi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I love this question. I often wonder how other business owners feel about this exact question. I definitely have wondered what it would be like to have a regular job. I think about how I would be able to relax when I got home from a long day instead of having to restock the trailer, make posts on social media & take care of accounting needs. I think about how I’d be able to hang out with my friends & family on the weekends instead of spending my entire day at events. I think about how nice it would be to know how much money I’ll be making on a weekly basis and always getting paid. With all that being said I also think about how lucky I am to be doing something that I created from scratch. I think about how I get to make all the decisions in every aspect of my business. I think about how excited I am for every new creation & idea. I think about the inspiration I spread to other by being an example a young small business owner. I think there is a way to be happy as a business owner and that’s with balance. Once you are burnt out it’s very hard to recover. There is not a one size fits all career path. You won’t know if it suits you until you try it!
I am definitely happy with what I have accomplished & wouldn’t have it any other way. But, I am always in tune with my happiness and open to making decisions for me and my business that would allow more balance even though it may not make me more money.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Naomi, I own Omi’s Coffee House. We are a little mobile coffee trailer based out of New Jersey. I am originally from New Jersey but moved to Washington State for 6 months back in 2018. When I moved there I fell in love with all the mobile coffee businesses they had. I wanted to take the same concept back to my hometown. This type of idea had always been brewing in the back of my mind. Even when I was little in Sunday school we would be asked to draw a photo of what we wanted to do when we were older, and I always drew a smoothie shack, which has now come to fruition but instead of smoothies, coffee. My husband and I with the help of our friends built my coffee trailer from the ground up. It was important for me to not only serve excellent coffee, but also to be serving that coffee in environmentally friendly packaging. We only use compostable cups, lids, and straws on the trailer. We serve all different types of carefully handcrafted coffee beverages. We love bringing our little business to different events across New Jersey in hopes that we can inspire people with our trailer. Our whole goal was to bring the cozy coffee shop ambiance to places that don’t have it. Now, Omi’s Coffee isn’t just a trailer that serves delicious coffee. We also offer one on one consulting for new business owners, and an awesome masterclass that has so much information for people who want to open their own mobile business. I am most proud of the community we have built surrounding our coffee trailer. The way people gather around the trailer and use it as a meeting place and something that they look forward to coming to just makes me feel so extremely happy.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Being unique & word of mouth. The coffee industry in some places is EXTREMELY saturated by different shops, trucks, and trailers all doing the same thing. The key is to offer something unique. Whether that is your ambiance, your aesthetic, your menu, your service, etc. You want to always be unique. Once you have that “unique” quality to your business people will share, share, share. As humans we want to be in on the next best thing, we want to be treated with love and care. So if your friend is telling you that there is this cool new place down the street that is covered in twinkle lights with candle lined tables and live music, you’re going to want to go. Or if they tell you the baristas and servers were so nice and really helped you curate your drink that you didn’t know how to order, you’re going to want to go have that same experience. For us, we made our trailer look like a tiny house on wheels, with a hand painted ceiling, and flower pots hanging from the outside. People who visit us can’t believe we are a coffee shop and literally do all our marketing for us by spreading the word, posting on Instagram, and giving us a follow.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I first opened the trailer I had this idea of a drive through. I made the idea reality when we started setting up our trailer with a drive through window in a local Mexican restaurant. At first it was everything we wanted. We got to be in a great location with all our locals coming through and it seemed to be really working out. But then, the town gave us a hard time over being set up past 12 when the restaurant would open. The weather started to get really cold and we didn’t have enough power to run a heater. We realized we weren’t busy on Tuesdays so we closed Tuesdays, then Wednesdays, then Thursdays and then we were only open on Fridays.
I looked at my numbers and realized for the amount of work we had to do to stay open, I wasn’t actually able to pay myself. There were a few factors that went into it, one being the amount of prep and cleanup outweighed the amount of hours we legally could be open. We also were considered “a weekly treat” in our community instead of a daily routine which meant a lot of folks were only coming to see us once a week. We made the hard decision to stop serving at that location and focus on events and that was a really good decision for us, even though we miss all our regulars.

Contact Info:

• Website: omiscoffeehouse.com
• Instagram: omiscoffeehouse
• Facebook: facebook.com/omiscoffeehouse
• Youtube: youtube.com/omiscoffeehouse

Image Credits
Naomi Rapp, owner