Woman Reveals How She Set Up Coffee Shop Chain on ‘Maxed Out Credit Card’

If you haven’t hatched an ambitious plan to slack off your 9-to-5 job and launch your own florist, confectionary store or café, then you will definitely know someone who has, or at least wants to.

It’s a common phenomenon now, in the age of “quiet quitting” amid growing state retirement ages, to want to dip out of the rat race and pursue a project or business idea of your own instead.

While most dreamers sadly cannot materialize this goal, some can. So what’s the measure of a young businesses success? When investors have offered its owners $100,000 in funding to support its expansion.

That’s what happened to Rhode Island coffee shop power couple, Audrey Finocchiaro and Sam Lancaster. The pair, who are getting married next week, built what they call a “subpar” coffee cart in Finocchiaro’s parent’s basement in 2016 when they were both just 23 years old.

Seven years later and The Nitro Bar, the name of their first cart and subsequent coffee empire, has four brick and mortar stores and over 70 tap locations in different parts of Rhode Island. The couple, who launched the chain on one maxed-out credit card, now have their sights set on expanding.

How the Business Grew on a Maxed-Out Card

“My boyfriend and I maxed out my $1,500 credit card and built a coffee cart in my parent’s basement seven years ago,” Finocchiaro told Newsweek.

“We then spent the summer in Rhode Island taking the cart out almost every single day. We’d collapse the four walls into the back of a borrowed outback Subaru and bring the cart to wherever we were permitted.”

“On most days we would make $60, but on one fateful afternoon we popped up at Brown University. Students flocked over to the card and we sold out of everything in just 30 minutes,” she added.

From then on the couple, with the support of their friends and family, built three more coffee carts. To their surprise, in 2017 they were approached by investors and secured $100,000 in funding to expand the budding business.

With the summer coming to a close, and the number of people eyeing up an afternoon cappuccino in the park dwindling, time was of the essence for the couple to find a permanent home for their brand.

“We quickly began to approach local restaurants to carry our nitro cold brew on tap. We secured 50 accounts that year, thanks to the kindness of many restaurateurs who wanted to give us, a young coffee couple, a shot,” Finocchiaro said.

“We built our first coffee shop that following winter in Providence. Two years later we built our second coffee shop in Newport, and the year after that we opened our third.”

“Two years later, and our fourth coffee shop has opened in Little Compton. It’s nestled between cows and the ocean, and our 400 square foot shop and bakery has completely stolen our hearts,” she said.

With four physical stores under their belt, Finocchiaro and Lancaster also sell merchandise related to their store brand.

What the Future Holds

To sustain their living costs while the business was still in its “subpar” cart form, the coffee aficionados waitressed and bartended during the nights, and worked all day on the travelling cart. Finocchiaro and Lancaster roped in any friends they could to help get The Nitro Bar up on its feet and stuffed all their proud earnings into a mason jar.

The couple are due to be married next week, after a 10-year-long relationship.

“Our closest friends and family will be present and both of us couldn’t feel more grateful,” Finocchiaro continued.

Bizarrely, the pair’s fairytale engagement is something that the coffee entrepreneur predicted when she was at school with Lancaster.

“When someone asked me in the 9th grade who I’d marry out of everyone at the school, I picked Sam,” Finocchiaro shared in a social media post.

Although the natural surroundings of The Nitro Bar’s new digs has “reminded the couple to slow down” after seven years of non-stop hustle, Finocchiaro has been testing out the limits of social media to share their unique story.

The entrepreneur, who goes by @audfin on TikTok, has amassed over 56,000 followers on the platform, where she regularly posts day-in-the-life videos or insights into her trade and relationship.

The soon-to-be newlyweds’ focus is now on appreciating “the little things and remembering why they started The Nitro Bar in the first place”. The answer to which, to Finocchiaro, is because the pair really wanted to add something to their community, build a gentle corporate team and to pursue their wildest dreams.

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