Today we’d like to introduce you to Isaiah Rosario.
Isaiah, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My story is fairly long, but I can summarize it to the best of my abilities. When I attended the Granada hills charter high school I had my first business. With my parent’s help, I was able to lease a food truck, from there my journey began. At the age of 16, having my own business and being a high school student was incredibly hard but through the help of my peers, family, faculty, and other business owners I had pushed through to run a successful food truck. During high school, I participated in a great culinary program at Granada hills charter and winning a scholarship through CCAP for a certificate program with culinary arts, once I completed chef school I had gone on to work a several restaurants in Los Angeles part-time such as red bird, smaller cafes, and even motion picture catering. I took as much knowledge as I could, to apply it to my food truck. We ran the food truck for three years eventually selling it to open our new venture which is now a booming success, R coffee house located in the heart of Granada hills walking distance from the high school and minutes from my home. Using my culinary background, I created a small captivating menu that was much needed in the area. Over the last year, we have seen a growth of over 200%. Our next step is to expand our cafe and triple in size by late 2020.
At the cafe, I hire all local college and high school students to support the community. All employees are part-time and go to CSUN or Granada hills charter. With this, I help support the community by creating jobs and working around the hectic school schedule of a full-time student with most jobs won’t accommodate. Everything I have done is because of my family and my supportive community, my mother and father had always tried to give me what I needed to be successful and I took it and used it to the best of my abilities in order to run a successful business. I will be forever grateful to them.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The struggles I had faced are too many to count but the biggest ones are so. I did not mention it in the previous question but four months into opening R Coffee House I had an opportunity to open three more businesses in Hollywood, it put a tremendous amount of pressure on my self and my father. My father left his job in the motion picture industry to help support me. Two months in my father had a heart attack due to the stress caused by operating four businesses, he was only 40 years old at this time. He made it to the hospital and they successfully put a stent in his heart. Now he is back in the motion picture industry we let go of the three other locations and only focusing on R coffee house.
The biggest problem for my self is being so young operating a full functioning cafe. I am 21 years old and the cafe is going on three years in business with a staff of 17 employees. As I am still learning, I push myself to be at the cafe almost all the time I am here seven days a week, 60-70 hours a week to improve my cafe and try to do things better then I did the day before.
R Coffee House – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
R Coffee House is all about family. The R in R coffee House stands for my last name Rosario. We strive to make everyone who comes in the door of R coffee house to be welcomed and treated with the highest respect. Food-wise we are pushing 75-100 covers a day on a weekday and weekend pushing 280, all of this is on a crepe machine. A super small kitchen with only 1 unit of cooking to put it in size its a round plate that is about 20 in across. We serve signature avocado toast, our top seller breakfast sandwich, crepes, french toast, waffles, breakfast plates and more! All with farm-fresh local ingredients. To drink we have a variety of Italian espresso drinks, to our more modern handcrafted drinks such as oat milk matcha latte, horchata matcha latte, or dulce de leche latte, 100% hand-pressed lemonade, and single origin coffees. Our total workspace is about 200 sqft. its quite miraculous how much we pump out in our tiny kitchen.
What sets me apart is I am 1000sq ft no more the 50 seats inside and out, and I am pushing out gourmet food and handcrafted drinks and we are in walking distance of 2 Starbucks locations, and an award-winning cafe right across the street who has a state of the art kitchen, We are in direct competition with them and we are thriving. People come to us to start their day, they could go to the much more convenient drive-thru but they still come to us. That is what I am most proud of.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success to me is more than the money aspect. It’s about the people I have touched and how I affect their day. I have been very blessed with what I have and what I have been given. Anything more then what I have now or have had in the past is apart of my success.
I am only 21 and in 5 years, I have seen major success as a surviving business in an industry that has an 80% fail rate in the first three years.
Contact Info:
- Address: 19174 Ludlow St Porter Ranch CA 91326
- Website: www.rcoffeehouseinc.com
- Phone: 8189233469
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @R_coffeehouse_
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/r-coffee-house-los-angeles-3?osq=r+coffee
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