Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicholas Sharp.
Nicholas, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We are Australians that moved to Miami in 2012 for my (Nick) job, which was as regional CFO for a commodity trading company. In 2014, we opened Threefold on Giralda Avenue in Coral Gables to bring an Australian style cafe, with breakfast and specialty coffee, to the neighborhood. At that time, there were only 2 options for specialty coffee in Miami being Panther in Wynwood and Eternity downtown. Thankfully things have changed a little since then!
Originally we had the idea to just do a specialty coffee program and offer snacks, pastries and a light lunch. However, the location we ended up settling in on had a full kitchen so we put a breakfast menu together. The breakfast soon exploded and we had accidentally opened a restaurant. My wife, Teresa ran the coffee program and I organized the kitchen (whilst still working full time).
In June 2015, I left my full-time job to focus on the cafes and since then we have opened Threefold Cafe South Miami as well as a smaller coffee concept @ Douglas Entrance.
We have also just started roasting our own coffee after partnering up with local roasters: ‘Relentless Roasters’.
We are opening our third Threefold at the Astor Hotel on Miami Beach in September.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Usual small business issues. We are operating in older buildings that have been around for a while so with that comes a certain level of maintenance and issues.
Staffing in the hospitality industry is inherently transient but we have always been fortunate to have great people working with us that have got on board with our ideas and do a great job.
At our Coral Gables location, we are just coming to the end of 14 months of very difficult conditions as our street has been a construction zone with the Coral Gables streetscape project, which was supposed to take 4-5 months but has taken over a year. That has been pretty challenging.
Other than that the business side has been continuously encouraging. We have found that people generally appreciate the quality of our product and welcome an all-day breakfast. Specialty coffee is also still pretty new in Miami but people are appreciating the better quality coffee that is now available around town and learning more.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Threefold Cafe – what should we know?
We are an Australian style cafe which basically means we are a hybrid between a coffee shop and a restaurant. We provide sit down table service for food and/or just coffee as well as to-go coffee.
We have a chef-driven menu focused on local and fresh ingredients. We try to make as many items as we can in-house and where not, we partner with other local artisans. We have a great network of local suppliers that we work with.
Our real passion is the coffee program. We try to source and serve interesting specialty coffees and give our customers a taste for better quality coffee.
We are probably best known for our version of our smashed avo toast.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
We try to focus on quality and regularly updating and rotating our menu.
A huge thing for us has been social media, particularly Instagram. People LOVE taking photos of their food these days and this has really been a fantastic way for us in spreading our name, menu and what we do to a wide range of people that would otherwise be really hard, if not impossible for us to communicate to.
Also conceptually we are doing something that just isn’t that common over here in offering all-day breakfast and a specialty coffee concept. We also really put some time, effort and creativity into our breakfast dishes.
There are also only a couple of other specialty coffee shops in Coral Gables.
I think these things along with our friendly and personable staff have been the main factors in our success.
Contact Info:
- Address: 141 Giralda Avenue, Coral Gables, 33134
6907 Red Road, Coral Gables, 33143
@ The Astor: 956 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139
@ Douglas Entrance: 800 S Douglas Rd, Coral Gables, FL 33134 - Website: www.threefoldcafe.com
- Phone: 3057048007
- Email: info@threefoldcafe.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/threefoldcafe/?hl=en (@threefoldcafe)
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/threefoldcafe/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/threefold-cafe-coral-gables-2-coral-gables
Image Credit:
Macias Advertising
Andrea Lorena
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