Journey of an entrepreneur

By Minh-Anton D

Down the street from the busy Santa Clara Hospital is an even busier cafe located on Bascom Avenue. Filled with picturesque backgrounds, delicious boba drinks, and a yummy brunch menu is K-Cafe. 

First opened in December of 2019, the cafe has gone through a lot that has threatened to close their store. 

However, through all of that, they have remained in business and are filled with more people than ever. Here is the story on how the owner, Kayla Dinh, started her career, navigated through obstacles, and led her cafe to success.

Long before K-Cafe ever popped up, Kayla sought the journey of having financial freedom. 

Kayla: “First, I want to have my financial freedom. I wanna be great for my passions, and I want to be—I want to control my lifestyle and have my own schedule.”

Financial freedom is a status where someone’s financial choices have allowed them to not worry about money because it produces on its own for them, whether it’s in the form of ever-growing stocks or a self-sufficient business. For Kayla, her first step to financial freedom was to open up a business. 

Kayla: “The very first business was no food or drinks, really—it was a salon.”

Her endeavor proved right. Customers became clients and soon, she became busy with their appointments. 

Kayla: “I got booked at least three months in advance, and I got stuck with that schedule. So you know, you prefer a sudden stylist; you gonna go with her, you gonna book her for a year.”

This strict schedule and having to adhere to her clientele’s requests soon posed a problem to her time.

Kayla: “I can’t go anywhere and I got stuck at the salon. It’s a good problem to have. We are too packed at the salon—we got booked all the time—but you know, we had no life.”

Having a salon helped her gain financial freedom. However, it restricted her time. Money was in abundance; however, she was stuck to her job. She reevaluated her situation and sold her salon in search for an opportunity where she could simultaneously earn more money without having to spend too much time working for it. 

Soon, the opportunity struck her: to open a boba business. 

Kayla: “It’s called Boba Fitt, you know that? We got successful on that one too.”

Though it was successful, she noticed the market was moving. 

Kayla: “But it’s just, we see the market, you know, the milk tea is kinda going down a bit and we don’t want to wait until it’s going down, so we start with the cafe business and you know, we come up with this.”

So she moved her sights, sold her boba store, and opened a cafe in search for success. 

Shortly after opening K-Cafe, disaster struck when the government shut down all businesses due to COVID-19. All sorts of obstacles presented themselves in front of her. These obstacles would make her work even harder when businesses began to reopen.

Kayla: “We still had to pay rent during that time but we were able to pay a year later when we reopened again. That mean we have to find a way to increase the revenue a lot more than we expected in order to cover the double rent and the inventory that we have to throw away during the pandemic.”

Her cafe shut down for a year and with it, many products had to be thrown out because they were perishable. That cost hit hard on her and to top it off, she had to pay double rent to cover the rent that was owed over quarantine. She had to somehow find ways to create more profits than relying on the sale of boba drinks. Thus, she found innovative ways to do so. (restate this)

Kayla: “We started to create the brunch menu. Our tea menu, private events, every service before—we didn’t have it. Before, it was more like a cafe and bakery. We didn’t offer food back there until the pandemic.”

She had to strategize, so she began to offer catering services, hosted special events, made an afternoon tea menu, and created other services to gather more profit other than from boba drinks. 

Being able to bring her cafe back to life was more than a one-person mission. It was a mission for a team. She had to motivate her team of cooks, cashiers, and everyone in between to work together efficiently. To do so, she had to set an example. 

Kayla: “That’s a hard part ‘cause they have to see you do a lot more than them in order for them to follow you. I hands-on everything. So I do everything they do; I do better than them. So when they need it, they need to come to ask me.”

Her ingenuity did not stop there, however. She had to become observant and multitask with the customers in order to sustain her business.

Kayla: “In order to survive, you kind of have to switch your business type a little bit. You just have to observe how the traffic in the store, you know. If you see there’s no customer, you see sometime, you see customers dress very casual. They don’t feel comfortable going to the fancy place and they order to-go. So we just have to adjust the menu from there.”

She had to keep up with trends and relate to the customers in order to bring in more traction.

And it all worked out! Nowadays, Kayla is the owner of a successful cafe. On weekends, it gets so busy that she has to come in to manage the store. On weekdays, her team manages her store and she can spend her time on other ideas and projects that would help her create more revenue.

Ultimately, her ingenuity paired with a hard working team has helped her put her place on the map. Today, it has become a bustling hub with customers coming in and out the door with lines stretching outside its doors on the weekends.