What inspired us to start our business was we had this natural connection from Costa Rica where our mom is from where our dad was already kind of drinking a certain type of coffee and bringing it home every 6 months. Once 2016 hit, my dad had already had a u online business that he had started for his uh hobby. We kind of just sat there and talked and brainstormed how we can bring more of this delicious coffee back to the United States. So that's when we decided to start Plaza importing the coffee that was pre-roasted to um our house and selling bags of it.
Uh after that we just naturally progressed into pivoting into different types of uh businesses. We then started doing our cold brew, then looked at retail, and then finally came into like a full-blown cafe. The construction was an idea that my husband had. He kind of just got into it.
He had done some construction in in the past, but when he wanted to become a business owner, that was what naturally kind of came. He started that that business and it kind of hit. It took off. It did really well and we've been doing it since officially since uh 2019 and it and it's been going well.
and the super marcado. This was actually the initial business idea that um my husband wanted to start and that we're talking years ago um he saw a need in our community to have something like this. And as the Hispanic population continued to grow um and as the years went by, we saw that um there still wasn't some this concept here in Battle Creek uh super meal of this this size. And so in 2023, September of 2023, we decided that since the construction business was going well and we were able to invest in another business that we were going to go through and and do the super meal.
So we conducted market research by canvasing the community of Battle Creek to just kind of see what kind of event venues was out there, what they were doing, what they offered, who were they marketing to. So within our research, we came across an opportunity to market to Battle Creek area, more of the north side of Washington Heights. Um partic particularly people of color for sure to be able to have a place that they can come to and uh celebrate, have events. I actually was able to work with the Small Business Development Center out of Western Michigan University.
They were a great source and a a great help to walk me through the steps of writing, which was my first business plan. That was a great resource for me to help with anything that I liked and um knowing what to include all in my business plan. Yes, we have a friend who actually connected us with the consultant um that helped us with the the business plan. So, I put something together and the consultant uh helped us think a little bit further on things that we could add, things that we should take out.
Uh kind of proofreading it and putting a final piece together.
