Apostrophe

CDO / FOOD / Drinks, Dessert / Coffee, Cakes

Founder: Florence Velasco

1. What got you started with this brand? What was your inspiration? What is the idea/concept behind it?

We always enjoyed drinking a cup of coffee and feeling that we could take over the world one caffeinated day at a time (haha), hence we decided to open a café! Apostrophe was created out of a need to pause in order to break from routine to enjoy time with friends, to unwind, and to be inspired.

2. What is your best-selling product?

Our best-selling product is the Apostrophe Latte. It’s one of our Signature Lattes on the menu. It’s a classic latte sweetened with vanilla and topped with our sweet cream. This is the perfect latte for those who are just starting out to drink coffee!

3. What do you want people to experience with your brand/product(s)?

We want people to experience that feeling of inspiration. When you walk in the cafe, you are immediately met with the sound of lo-fi cafe music, the smell of coffee, and plants left and right. This is to induce a sense of being in a safe space where you can just take a pause from your everyday life. When you get our coffee to-go or deliveries, we want customers to experience the feeling that you can take on the world one great cup of coffee at a time!

4. What tips and advice can you give to entrepreneurs who are just starting out or are planning to start their own brand?

3 quick tips for those who are starting out their own brand:

a) Invest time into THOROUGHLY planning your brand. I started out with just doing whatever I wanted in terms of branding and it cost me a lot more to try to re-brand and make customers understand what Apostrophe is down the line. Your brand is who you are and how your consumers will come to understand your business so do it right the first time–it will take twice the effort to re-educate your consumers.

b) Start small. They say “go big or go home,” but I say that’s just a recipe for disaster. The bigger the investment, the bigger the loss. Start with a capital you can accept losing. Do small test runs first while aiming for much bigger goals in the next months/years. This will also allow you to learn and fail at a smaller scale first.

c) Run with a Purpose. If you don’t have a purpose behind your business–if it’s just for money and glory–when your books don’t look good, when things aren’t growing as fast as you want, you won’t have enough reason to stay. There are a million moments in the process of growing a business that will make you want to shut down and just look for a job. But having a purpose reminds you that what you’re doing is greater than yourself.

5. What’s next for your brand?

We basically want to move into creating more awareness about how great local coffee can be whilst also improving the livelihood of local farmers. Our focus in the first 2 years was about our customers, but we have transitioned into also focusing on growing our partnership with local farmers who we educate to grow higher quality coffee. We want to be able to integrate this into a space in the next years wherein customers can enjoy an open space with greenery and those who want to learn more about coffee can get workshops at anytime.

6. What other additional information and details would you like to share?

If customers can’t enjoy coffee in our cafe because of the pandemic, they can enjoy coffee at home with our Coffee Home Kit, which includes freshly roasted beans, syrups, milk, filters, etc. We have tutorials on our IG page on how to use the kit to enjoy great coffee at home.

Follow Apostrophe Cafe on IG!

Photos by: Leah Abellanosa