“They Called Me Crazy” Says Visionary Entrepreneur Who Opened Coffee Spot

ENTREPRENEURIAL thinking is often belittled in Ireland, but few of us possess the visionary vision to envision the vision local business woman Casey O’Dowd had when she opened something called a ‘coffee hut’.

“I was going in blind, it was a leap of faith on the holistic logistics front, it hadn’t been done before, there was no examples I could look to. I only had my determination and this mad, mad, crazy dream,” O’Dowd explained.

“I wanted to pivot to a disruptive start up, I’m not saying we’ll be a unicorn but while everyone doubted me I knew this had scalability, I can’t stress enough how unique a proposition this is,” O’Dowd said, still talking about a coffee spot, we think.

It’s one thing to have an eerie and singular vision but how do you acquire the means with which to pursue your dream?

“The first stumbling block came as I tried to get funding, I was sitting there with an investor and they’d just never heard of people drinking coffee but then I said ‘Daddy, I’m not asking for that much, it’s only €20k’ and suddenly I secured my first investor and it snowballed from there all the way to when I later him for an additional €20k”.

“They doubted me, they said no one in Ireland would pay €4 for a coffee,” said O’Dowd, the owner of one of the nation’s 47,209 cafe outlets in the great south Dublin area.

When asked what’s the USP that will keep everyone coming back, the trailblazing entrepreneur had this to say.

“I think people will respond to the fact our accoutrements are all homemade somewhere in a large factory by a company that supplies lots of cafe with identical produce, and if that wasn’t enough we stock that same brand of coffee everyone else does!”