At number 659 of Coronel Lisboa, in Vila Mariana, south of São Paulo, there is a tiny cafeteria, in fact, a small door named Clemente Café, owned by nice Tatiana Rocha.
Graduated in marketing, Tatiana is, first and foremost, a hard-working woman. At the age of 12, she was helping the family in the family bicycle shop, at the north of the capital. At 16, she already had some money saved, invested in her career, worked for 10 years in the largest bank in the country, in the areas of endomarketing, investments, personal credit and digital marketing.
She has always known she wanted to start a business of her own, but still did not know what. As her boyfriend, Gabriel Penteado, from Cupping Café, was passionate about the subject, he ended up pulling Tatiana up to the world of specialty coffees.
On a birthday, Gabriel gave her a grinder. “My life changed. I began to fall so in love with special coffees that I crossed the city to buy the white packets of specialty coffees that Isabela Raposeiras, from the Coffee Lab, used to sell”, says Tatiana.
“We began to go together for cuppings, tastings, Lorena’s coffee week, and I always tried to absorb all the knowledge”, she explains.
(Tatiana Rocha, the friendly owner of Clemente Café)
Tatiana has never taken a formal baristas course, her knowledge comes from practice. When she left Itaú, she had already bought an old espresso machine, through contacts from the coffee world. “A guy was closing a bar and I got the machine. I thought if I did not open a café, I could restore it and sell it. For a long time, it served as a support table in the living room”, she explains.
She took a course at Sebrae, decided to open the business, restored the machine and started looking for a place. It was her boyfriend who found the venue, with his clinical look as an architect. After all, who would have thought that a small door that once housed a glass shop could, with a beautiful renovation, turn into a tiny but fine cafeteria?
(The entrance facade with the logo of Clemente Café, a space that used to be a glass shop)
In the third month of operation, she had to expand her working hours and, since its onset, a little over a year ago, she also started to open on weekends and hired the first employee. Today, she works from Sunday to Sunday and already has demand for two more employees.
Clemente Café sells, on average, more than 100 coffees a day, with an estimated 100 visitors per day. “We have people coming from Jabaquara, Saúde, Ipiranga, to taste our coffees, just like me, when I would cross the city to buy the coffees, at the Coffee Lab”, she proudly says.
Tatiana further says that her most loyal customers have set up a whatsapp group, “clemenccinos”, where they discuss various issues related to special coffee. Its participants say that Tatiana has created real “little monsters” who can only drink special coffees. “This is great not only for me, but for the whole market. It is this customer who will demand better coffee at the bakery, which will cause the supply of good coffees to increase”, she explains.
(The space that houses the Clement Cafe: small in size with a huge success!)
Coffee
Also for a matter of space – after all the cafeteria is only seven square meters – it offers two methods of preparation, in addition to the espresso: hario and aeropress. It has been working with toasted coffees by Hugo Wolf, Bica Café and Pereira Vilela.
“Clemente Café is very disruptive. I never gave up on my toast profile. My coffee has acidity, and I manage to get new customers with a more educational footprint if they are interested in learning. This proximity, of assisting everyone, talk in a more intimate way, is the coolest part. Nobody will gain nothing if I tell my audience that the coffee has xpto bills. You must have sensitivity”, she explains.
(Exterior part of Clemente Café)
Next steps
Tatiana’s business model turned out to be right, and she is already thinking about expansion plans for next year. “I’m thinking of two paths: I’ll either open another cafeteria on the same footprint, small, intimate, right here in the neighborhood or I’ll open another one a little bigger, so that customers will have a little more comfort”, she says.
Despite the café’s profile, serving in paper cups, imported from the USA, and made to keep the coffee temperature, Tatiana realized that her customers wanted to consume food right there. “Despite our diminutive size, customers remain here from 15 to 45 minutes. This allowed me to invest more in foods that take a few minutes to get ready”, she says.
“They will use the wi-fi, make friends. I relate to Clemente cafe with the Estação da Sé subway. One can always see people there”, she concluded thoroughly excited!
(Interior of Clemente Café, in Vila Mariana)
Clemente Café
Rua Coronel Lisboa, 659, Vila Mariana, SP
Open from Monday to Monday
