SOZO Cafe was opened on 2340 State St in Hamden, CT in May of 2005 . It was opened to the public by Frontline Christian Church. I know what your thinking "Huh? A church opening a cafe? Weird." Some people think its a sneaky way of trying to get people in here so we can hit them over the head with a bible but that has yet to happen, and we plan on keeping it that way. SOZO was made for the people in our community to have a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere to come to wind down in.
Being NICE. Most times (here in the North east anyway) its hard to find good service. We have found that you can make someones whole day just by genuinely asking "how are you today" and serving them with a smile.
Anybody and everybody. We are located on an industrial road so we get a broad range of construction workers to the business class, teenagers to college students. Its a little bit of everything.
One challenge that we faced in the beginning was not enough food selection and not enough counter space to add it. But over time, we have added on to our counter and added a variety of sandwiches and other foods/ snacks. Two huge challenges we still face are LOCATION and lighting. We are a stand alone business with no foot traffic near us, on a busy road. So people usually drive by so fast that by the time they have thought about coming in, theyre are already down the road. People usually have driven by a million times before they finally stop in. But once they do stop in, they love the place. Another challenge is lighting. Our ceilings are really high, with lights that are above the windows which makes our huge windows look black and dark, so people tend to think we are closed! We plan to put some pendant lighting hanging right in the middle of them- hopefully that works.
In five years we will hopefully have a couple more stores. We also would like to incorpoate music and shows back into our schedule as it gets busier.
