Java ​“Happiness” Coming To The Grove

One week after Whole G Bakery arrived in Pitkin Plaza, another coffee shop announced plans to open a block away — with a mission to ​“end poverty” in the process.

Vishal Patel and Onyeka Obiocha plan to bring ​“The Happiness Project,” a coffee shop-coworking space offshoot of their idealistic coffee company, to 758 Chapel St, a property recently leased by The Grove, a collaborative office space.

The company, A Happy Life, currently provides coffee to over 60 grocery stores and coffee shops in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, Patel said. Patel is the the company’s founder and CEO, and Obiocha is the president and chief operations officer. In late December or early January, the two are opening The Happiness Project in the first floor of a property recently acquired by The Grove, the state-backed start-up hub. This past Wednesday they held a party at The Grove to launch a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the new outlet.

Patel said he sees his mission as greater than just running a local coffee shop.

“My vision is to eradicate poverty,” Patel said.

To that end, 100 percent of the profits from A Happy Life will go toward combating poverty in farming communities, according to the website. But right now, Patel said, the company isn’t making money. When it does, it will start by investing money in Kilema, a town in Tanzania where Patel spent many months volunteering as a college student.

But, since The Happiness Lab might need to take on investors in order to finance their growth, who would take a cut of the profit, the coffee shop might become a separate entity owned by A Happy Life, Patel said.

Don’t Worry; Be Happy

In addition to being a full-service coffee shop, The Happiness Lab will host events, such as live music, meditation classes, and a PechaKucha-style gathering called ​“Inspire!” said Patel, owner of A Happy Life, which will provide coffee for and run the café. The front part of the space will be a coffee lounge. The back will have a conference room and desks owned by The Grove.

The idea for The Happiness Lab began in a motel room in Lagos, Nigeria, in September 2012.

Patel was sitting in his ​“queen-ish” size bed at about 8 in the evening. The room was bare save a small TV, a wooden desk, and a chair. Patel held a small notebook and started to sketch out ideas.

Patel had graduated from Boston University in January 2012 with a major in biochemistry and molecular biology. He was in Nigeria as part of the Cambridge-based not-for-profit Youth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, charged with helping local entrepreneurs get their products onto supermarket shelves. The local stores only carried major international brands like Nestle and Unilever, Patel said, and it was his job to help people who had previously just been selling on the street get more market exposure.

But no matter how hard he tried, Patel couldn’t get the attention of the store managers.

“We literally went to a manager’s office,” Patel said. ​“He was standing right behind a secretary, and he didn’t even acknowledge us. The secretary wouldn’t let us talk to him.”

Patel considered the project a failure. His interactions — or lack thereof — with supermarket managers convinced him that Africa couldn’t support its own entrepreneurs. But he knew there was a market for some of the goods in the United States. One of those goods was coffee. So, Patel decided to start a coffee company. That night in Lagos, he stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning — way past his normal bedtime of 10 p.m. — drafting the vision for the company.

He knew that he would need a special brand in order to compete with other coffee roasters and providers.

“In my opinion, you can only roast coffee so good,” Patel said. ​“I like coffee, but it’s just coffee.”

So Patel knew he needed a unique strategy. He chose what he calls a ​“happiness brand.” He said that he wants his company name and logo to make people think about their happiness, and provide them the resources to improve the quality of their lives. The company’s logo is a coffee mug that looks like a smiling face, and the names of his coffee varieties are happiness-related words in other languages. One product is Tanzanian Furaha — furaha means ​“happiness” in Swahili, the language spoken in the region where the coffee is grown, according to A Happy Life’s website.

Patel even came up with the company’s slogan in that motel room: ​“Life is Short, Live Happy, & Pass It On!”

Family Helps Out

After Patel returned to the U.S., he got a job in the winter of 2012 at New Britain’s Hospital for Special Care, to make some money so that he would be able to start the business. One weekend morning in January 2014, he broke the news about his coffee company to his parents over breakfast.

His father laughed when he related the conversation. “‘I’m thinking of quitting my job and starting this full time,’” Jatin Patel recalled his son saying. ​“It was a little bit of a surprise to [me and my wife].”

Patel’s parents gave his son their full support, Jatin said. They let him use some of their resources – Vishal’s mother is a caterer at HeartyFoods in Wallingford, and Vishal is currently roasting his coffee there on equipment that he owns.

On Feb. 8, 2014, Patel’s birthday, he quit his job at the hospital and started working on his company full time. Then, it was just a coffee roasting company, with no plans to open a physical shop.

Patel has been working on building his company as a member of The Grove. Located at 760 Chapel St., The Grove provides workspace to local entrepreneurs. In return for a monthly membership fee, the Grove offers desk space, wifi, and coffee and tea, among other amenities. Memberships range from $75 to $250 per month – more money grants you more frequent access.

Over the summer, The Grove started leasing the three-story property at 758 Chapel. Christopher Nicotra, a managing member of Olympia Properties, is the landlord of both 758 and 760 Chapel St. Originally, the two properties would be physically separate, said Slate Ballard, co-founder of The Grove. Ballard said that he had some ideas for what The Grove could do with the property, one of which was to create a ​“graduation space” for businesses developed at The Grove. When the entrepreneurs wanted a more permanent office space, they could move next door.

But a couple of months ago, Nicotra came to Ballard with a ​“crazy idea” – blow through the walls and connect the buildings internally.

“Most of the buildings in Ninth Square are connected,” Nicotra said of the neighborhood. By looking at how the windows lined up, he could tell that connecting the buildings might be possible.

“What? No way!” Ballard responded. ​“You can’t do that!”

Grove Grows

Nicotra proved Ballard wrong. Construction is underway to connect the two buildings. A door-sized piece of plywood (pictured) stands at the intersection of the two properties on the second floor.

Nicotra had asked Ballard if The Grove wanted to lease the entire building or just the second and third floor. Ballard said that he wanted all three — and he immediately thought of what to do with the ground floor.

“I’m going to ask this guy if he wants to run a coffee shop there,” Ballard said of Patel. ​“As it happens, he was going to start a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere two blocks down.”

At the time, Patel was planning to open up shop at 118 Court St. But building codes required him to add more bathrooms, Patel said, and he didn’t want to go through that hassle. So he decided to move his operation to The Grove.

The Happiness Project’s planned opening is in December or January. The plan is for a coffee shop in the front, which will be operated completely by Patel’s company. It will keep all revenue generated from the coffee operation.

There will also be workspaces in the back, including a 25-person conference room and 2 small private meeting rooms, Ballard said. Patel said that The Grove would get any profit generated from renting these spaces.

Kickstart Sought

In order to get the venture off the ground, Patel started a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of raising $15,000, he said. The money will help Patel set up the coffee bar, purchase nice furniture, and put finishing touches on the space, he said.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding website — users can donate to projects in exchange for rewards such as t‑shirts or coffee mugs. Fellow Grove members George Vasilopoulos and Mason Rabinowitz, who are partners at the crowd-funding agency RayGun V, came up with the rewards for Patel’s campaign.

One of the rewards is the privilege of creating your own coffee drink for the café’s menu. Thanks to Erick Rios’s $100 contribution, The Happiness Lab will be serving café con leche (Spanish for ​“coffee with milk”).

“It’s more milk than coffee,” Rios (pictured) said. ​“You make a thick, black coffee, and that gets mixed in with the milk. Not steamed, just heated.”

Rios grew up with this kind of coffee. He is from Puerto Rico, and started drinking coffee in kindergarten — but back then, it was mostly milk with only a drop of coffee. By the time he was in high school, Rios was drinking several cups of coffee a day.

Now, Rios is one of the owners and vice president for engineering of Big Bang, a product development firm that recently worked with Cuisinart to design a single-cup ​“Grind & Brew.” Put roasted coffee beans and water into the machine, press a button, and out comes the coffee. 

Rios is one of 89 backers, as of midday Sunday. The campaign has raised $4,607 out of its $15,000 goal.

Regardless of funding status, Patel said that he plans to proceed with the opening.

News of a new competitor hadn’t spread far around town. On Tuesday, Barry Levine, owner of Willoughby’s Coffee and Tea, said that he hadn’t heard of The Happiness Lab. Levine said that he wishes the new business well, and that he isn’t worried about the competition.

But Tom Panzella, owner of Cedarhurst Cafe, located at 44 Crown St., has heard of The Happiness Lab. In fact, Patel supplies coffee to Cedarhurst, and it was Patel’s largest customer until last month.

“I’m not exactly happy with it,” Panzella said.

Patel is confident that he will be able to attract customers, even in a town crowded with coffee shops. He said that he is located in a prime spot – the State Street train station is about 500 feet away. The Happiness Lab will be the first coffee shop on Chapel Street for commuters walking from the train station toward downtown.

For now, the company is focusing on New Haven, and trying to make a difference in the local community. It is offering donations to local arts groups based on sales of a ​“New Haven Artists Edition” line of coffee.

“Right now it’s about building a partnership with The Grove and building a partnership with the community, to try to make New Haven a happier place,” Patel said. ​“One cup of coffee at a time.”