Ep 31: Small Business Lessons: How One Woman Built a Houston Breakfast Empire

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm happy to be here.

Lovely.

Of course, the first question I have to ask is you came to Houston for oil and gas, not for restaurants, yeah?

Correct.

And then what made you walk away from that and into starting this cafe?

So I grew up in the restaurant industry up in the Northeast, and my parents had a pizza place, so from the time I was 12 I was raised in hospitality, basically.

I moved to, moved to Philadelphia.

That was in Delaware.

I moved to Philadelphia, went to school for product management.

Basically, I have an industrial design degree.

Hmm.

And I was working in hospitality at a coffee shop while I was in college.

Okay.

And then I got out for a little while, and I was a product manager.

I got out of hospitality for a little bit.

I was a product manager for a bicycle company, actually, for a few years.

Oh.

And traveled around the world.

I was in Asia a lot, actually.

Quite a bit.

And that was a great experience too, just traveling around.

And then I got laid off in 2009 when the economy took a downturn.

Yep.