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

Alright, Vinni thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

This was actually one of those moments where we had a long board meeting discussing possible names, but The Painted Mug Cafe was suggested over text 15 minutes after the meeting ended. We are all part of the nightlife performance scene, and many of us are/were drag performers, so we threw out a of names with inside jokes for the Queer community. Some of my favorites were LGBTea and T4Tea, but none of them felt quite right. As soon as the meeting ended without us picking a name, my brain was still going through pun names when I saw a drag performer friend on facebook posting about needing to “paint my mug” for the gig that night, and I texted the group and we all knew this was the perfect name. So, that’s how we became The Painted Mug Cafe and our logo became a mug with a beat face.

Vinni, 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?

The Painted Mug Cafe is a fairly new performance space and venue for rent. ‘The Mug’ was developed by a collaborative team of queer artists seeking to serve and empower our LGBTQIA+ community through providing a performance space that was not in a nightclub and could act as a community space in South Philly. Many of us actually stopped drinking or changed our relationship with alcohol over COVID lockdown, and so we wanted a space where folks who don’t drink and Queer folks who are under 21 can actually attend shows. It can also be really expensive to be a performer, and even more expensive to produce events, so over the last two years we have tried many ways to make performing and producing more accessible and ensure performers and staff are paid well. We keep out rental prices down so that we are covering our expenses while still remaining affordable to folks in marginalized communities, and even offer discounts for Trans and BIPOC producers. One of the main ways we produce shows is by offering a ticket split option so producers can pay for the venue without paying a rental fee up front. We are very proud of how we have been able to be an affordable option for event producers without relying on alcohol sales thanks to our amazing baristas, Teddy and Linden, who designed our delicious mocktails menu and our amazing baker, Baked by Cheffrey, who bakes our snacks like the fan-favorite Brown Butter Blondies!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Our business actually began through crowd funding. We are in a unique position because our building is owned by a board member, so we have the opportunity to start a business without a lot of capital. For brick and mortar locations, rent and renovations can bury a business in the first year. Owning the building allowed us time to do the renovations ourselves and open using the few thousand dollars raised by the local performance community on GoFundMe and Patreon. It is definitely a challenge to start a business this way, since every renovation happens as we have the funds to complete them. When we first opened in January 2022, all we had was a stage, a sound system, seating, a single folding table, and a refrigerator. Now we have a bakery case, air conditioning, and a 100 inch projector screen! In the future we hope to raise enough funds to build a wheelchair ramp and make our bathroom more accessible for mobility aids. It certainly would have been easier with a large investor bankrolling us, but we have done pretty well with a DIY approach, even if it takes longer to reach the business we envision. So, hopefully in the future we have the capital for building in food service and staffing the cafe for regular weekly hours, but for now we are happy as a performance venue and affordable rental space with some great prepacked food options!

Have you ever had to pivot?

We have had to pivot a few times over the last two years. When we first opened, we tried to be a drag and burlesque venue with guaranteed pay for performers, but we realized quickly that the small size of our space didn’t allow for enough ticket sales to fund large drag casts, so we pivoted to more intimate shows with less performers, and branched out to try and connect with musicians, comedians, and other artists with less upfront cost than drag performers (since it costs about $50 in clothes, makeup, and transportation every time they get into drag). So now we have great small events like Drag King Karaoke, Amatuer Night, Sober Rave, and concerts featuring local and touring bands.

Our biggest pivot in the business was realizing that ticket prices needed to go up a bit due to inflation, especially if we want to offer ticket splits for our producers. Prior to the Pandemic, it was common to see $10 shows, but that isn’t really enough to cover the cost of paying all our performers and offering a competitive wage for our employees (we have a $20/hour minimum for our staff pay). We realized that people are actually willing to spend $15-$25 for tickets if they are getting a great show and a few perks. This is why we started our $5 concessions voucher. Now any ticket split show includes a $5 voucher with each ticket to encourage folks to buy snacks and mocktails, and guarantees that we can make enough from concessions to give a bigger profit to the producers from door sales without making our shows financially inaccessible. We are also working on a new project that will hopefully allow us to offer discounted/free rentals to community groups and make our space even more financially accessible because so many members of the LGBTQ Community are living check to check thanks to stagnating wages and employment discrimination. We seek to provide opportunities for growth for our member-artists, including access to work, talent-incubation, and professional development. We believe a performance space for queer artists designed by queer artists is as empowering as it is unique. So we will keep pivoting and adapting until we make that mission statement a reality.

Contact Info:

• Website: thepaintedmugcafe.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepaintedmugcafe/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaintedMugCafePHLhttps://www.instagram.com/thepaintedmugcafe/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thepaintedmugcafe6660
• Other: Ticket Site: https://thepaintedmugcafe.simpletix.com/

Image Credits
The Painted Mug Cafe