Milan Blagojevic shares his incredible journey from working in speakeasies and on cruise ships to founding Miami's Naughty Coffee Shop, detailing his path from coffee truck beginnings to a new brick-and-mortar store.
Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your career path
Milan Blagojevic: I was born and raised in Europe, in Serbia, and I've been living in the US since 2015. I spent most of my life working in the hospitality industry, starting at 17 or 18. That's where I got my first barista job, and I used to work at a cafe-cocktail bar, a very popular place in Belgrade, where I learned my craft, I believe, for the first time in 2008 or 2009. That's where I started, and then I spent some time working on cruise ships for multiple cruise lines. I was a bartender at Celebrity Cruises. I worked as a bartender on a Disney cruise line. And that all led me to one day come to New York.
And that's actually where my US hospitality path started. More or less. My first job was in an Employees Only. It's one of the first speakeasies in New York. It was a great place where I was already kind of an experienced bartender, but it was a place where you have to start from the beginning, start at the lowest position behind the bar, and start my job as a stalker. So it's like when you work many years in the restaurant or like, let's say you're already a chef, but then you walk into a three-star Michelin restaurant, you have to start, you have to start from the beginning. You have to start being a, let's say, a prep cook or a dishwasher. So you gotta work your way up. That's how my journey started in New York.
And then, a few years after Employees Only, the cocktail bar wanted to open a spot in Miami. They offered me a position there, and I happily took it. We moved to Miami, and that's where I kind of worked for them for a few years. The restaurant unfortunately closed and then I decided to start my own business. It was kind of natural for me!
I decided to stay with coffee. Coffee has been a big passion of mine since I was a little kid. So it was kind of natural to stay in hospitality and make a little switch where I wanted to be present more, because in cocktail bars you usually work at night. So I was like, for almost 15 years I worked behind the bar, and I was like, I need to change my job to, you know, work more during the day. So I think, but that was not the only reason I did that. I was highly passionate about coffee. So I was like, let me pursue my dream in hospitality.
Where does the concept of Naughty Coffee come from?
Milan Blagojevic: That's something between my wife and me. When we first met, she was telling me, Are you sure you wanna go down that path and go after me and kind of be in love with me. I'm a very naughty person, meaning, like, when little kids are naughty, they're mischievous and cause trouble.
This is one of the first things she ever told me, and then that thing stayed with us, and years after, like 10 years after we opened our coffee shop, we're like, how are we going to call it? And then it just stuck to us. We're like, let's call it Naughty Coffee. And then the logo of ours, it's a head of a raccoon, and you know, raccoons are very naughty animals!
And then now, now it's a brand, and now it's a people seat, and they talk about it, and then they can recognize it. And it's just crazy. But, but that's how it started basically.
How did you build the brand back in the coffee truck days?
Milan Blagojevic: We lived in New York between 2015 and 2017. The coffee culture in New York was on another level; it was something I hadn't experienced before moving there at that time. And, it was actually something that we would always do. We would spend most of our time outside. We never had a day off in New York. It's always, if you live there, you never have home service out.
And if you spend a lot of time outside, most of the time you need a quick pick up because it's just in New York, it's a lot of walking, a lot of things going on, and it's like nonstop. And the coffee was something that we did daily, maybe a few times a day.
That's where we kind of knew what we wanted to do with our lives. We should have our coffee shop in the future. That's how it started. And then, you know, we started a coffee truck. In business, you either have your family to help you get started or your own savings. And that's what it was for us. We had some savings, and we were like,
What can we do with this money? Because when you're starting, there's not much, you cannot afford a big, beautiful, well-designed brick-and-mortar. You just start with what you have.
Of course, many startups have investors and friends, family, or whoever can help them. That's also good. But at that time, we just had our savings, and a coffee truck was something that we could build out with the money we had. Basically, that's how we started. And then, you know, we give it a name, and we were very excited about it.
And since we spend most of our working lives in hospitality, it was natural for us to hope we'd have a successful business, since we already know what you do. We already know that if we're treating people well, if we have a good product, we should do well.
And for us, it was never about wanting to do business, wanting to be successful, or wanting to grow. And that's all that matters. It was like, let's do what we love and let's see where it takes us. So that's all the thought behind everything. So it was just what we really liked.
What about you, where do you prefer to work from? Coffee truck vs. Brick-and-mortar
Milan Blagojevic: When I started the truck, I was really excited about it. And then, you spend some time, and then, unfortunately, you know, the humans as we are, start dreaming about something else. I want this, I want that, I want my business here, my business there. And then, you know, you appreciate your time in the truck, but you're dreaming of, you know, having a brick and mortar, right? And in theory, that's not too much of a difference to be honest.
You're interacting with the same people, you're serving the same product, day to day, you're doing the same thing. For us, it was just that we wanted to have a brick-and-mortar one day, just because we believed we could offer more. As you know, as I said, we spend most of our time in the hospitality industry, and we gather a lot of ideas for what we want to do and offer people. We wanted a kitchen, we wanted to roast our own coffee, and for that, obviously, you cannot do that in the truck.
In the truck, you can do just as much. You can do enough to make people happy and make them a great cup of coffee. But if you wanna do more, you need a bigger space. And now I'm working sometimes behind the bar in a brick-and-mortar, and I'm like, I miss my days in the truck. It's always like that. The grass is always greener.
How do you get people to come back besides the great coffee?
Milan Blagojevic: It's always hospitality. It's actually what people sometimes forget, and they think about funding, think about product, they think about design, which is all good. We all do that anyway.
Hospitality is the only thing that actually brings people back consistently. Of course, a good product, there's a coffee shop, there's a good coffee, and you count on it, but llet's say you have somebody who's not warm, you kind of lose desire of going back there eventually, you know, no matter how good cup of coffee is there or how much you like the design or anything behind the space you go.
Many business owners these days have forgotten the true meaning of hospitality. So they do hospitality, but they've forgotten what it means and represents.
Milan Blagojevic: Exactly, there's a whole meaning behind the word, and that's what actually hospitality should be.
We opened a coffee truck in Aventura Mall, and there were, like, I believe, seven to 10 coffee shops in the mall, right? And, you know, some people will be like, you know, the competition is strong. The market is over-saturated, you know, like how are you going to succeed? How are you going to compete in a market that already has everything, right?
And, my idea was always to do your own thing, you know, just be yourself and treat people well. And that's actually what you can do better.
If you're entering the market where there is a lot of competition, I think focusing on people is the most important thing because, you know, that's actually what's going to bring people back.
When you're interviewing someone, how can you tell this is a great person? This is someone I'm going to hire.
Milan Blagojevic: I always looked at the kindness in people. You know, people were honest and kind and uh, that's what's very important to me. Uh, personality is what matters; it’s what’s important.
If you're a little passionate about it and if you really want to try, you can learn anything. You know, I always try to have more experienced people if I can
But many times, I choose people who really don't have much experience but have a good personality and are good human beings.
And eventually they turned out to be very good workers, you know, they follow our standards, they took every shift as a training, and they just got better, and then now they are great baristas, but most importantly, they are good people. So that's what we're looking for.
Check Our Career Growth Tools
What's next for the Naughty Coffee?
Milan Blagojevic: I always have dreams and ideas. I want to have many coffee shops in different cities on different continents. That's always something that's in my head, but I always try to say, I'll give my best. If it happens, it happens, but many times you go through the business and get carried away. You try to think about what's next. And this time I try not to think too much about what's next, but to focus on the present. Just because the past five years for me were thinking, what's next, what's next. And of course, with that mindset, you're going to go forward. Of course, if the universe, stars, and everything align in your life, if you're healthy, you're going to go forward. But for me, I also want to enjoy the present.
Find available chef jobs in Miami, or check out more interviews like this brought to you by OysterLink to learn about the industry. You can also get them straight to your email by creating an OysterLink account and joining our newsletter.
Loading comments...