Walking into a coffee shop — spilling textbooks over a table, typing away furiously and having two cups of coffee for extra caffeine — can be anything but stress-free. Despite the soothing music in the background, coffee shops’ number one priority is rarely to create happiness.
Until now.
Vishal Patel, a 2012 College of Arts and Sciences alum, has worked to create a coffee shop, where visitors walk in and instantly think of happiness.
“[It’s] a badass happy space,” Patel said.
The Happiness Lab, scheduled to open in December in New Haven, Connecticut, plans to help people experiment with their own happiness through meditation, live music and inspirational talks. Though it won’t be long before people can set foot into the space itself, the process that preceded it started nearly five years ago. After his freshman year at BU, Patel felt the urge to do something different.
“I was kind of getting bored just with being in the states,” Patel said. “I wanted to go do something crazy, so I decided the following summer that I would take a trip abroad.”
Once he found a volunteer organization to take him, Patel embarked on the first of what would be three trips to Tanzania.
“As a result, when I was deciding what kind of brand I was going to create, what I was going to share with my customers, I decided this reoccurring theme in my life was happiness and this pursuit of happiness in general,” Patel said. “It’s kind of what brought me to Tanzania in the first place.”
Patel spent his first two visits tutoring in Tanzania, and on weekends, he would work with farmers to help them grow their crops — most of it, coffee beans.
“I did work with some coffee farmers and kind of got to know the whole agriculture system,” Patel said. “I spent almost a total of 6, 7 months there, and I decided when I graduated I wanted to keep going back, and I wanted to really help the farmers that I worked with out there.”
But, in learning about that system, he also learned about the questionable methods farmers used.
“It was kind of crazy. A lot of them used pesticides that have been banned in the U.S. for years,” Patel said. “I was kind of moved by that and realized something had to be done about that.”
With that realization came A Happy Life. The company, founded by Patel, sells coffee, grown organically in Africa and South America, to restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores in the United States, using part of the profits to fund infrastructure and economies in struggling nations. While the short-term aim is to create a successful business, Patel said he hopes to eventually create a dialogue between the sellers and the farmers.
“The goal is getting into these villages, start experimenting with different solutions and finding solutions to problems that farmers actually face,” Patel said.
As the company began to grow, though, space became limited and Patel needed a home for his business. After dedicating so much work to pitching and distributing coffee, Patel realized his company “needed a more sustainable way to rev up revenue.”
“We never had a central base to do things out of,” Patel said. “And we really wanted that.”
The Happiness Lab will be that home.
With construction underway, Patel is currently focusing on their Kickstarter campaign. With a goal of $15,000, it has over $11,000 already pledged as of Dec. 2.
“That’s going to help us put on the finishing touches,” Patel said.
Patel isn’t the only one confident in the benefits the coffee shop can have for its customers. Onyeka Obiocha, president of A Happy Life, said The Happiness Lab is first coffee shop of its kind.
“The Happiness Lab’s sole focus is to offer events, initiatives and programs dedicated to building a happier community, whether it’s a nutritionist offering a class on healthy eating or a local band entertaining customers,” she said.
Obiocha said it’s the next “iteration of the traditional coffee shop,” with the classes and live entertainment creating something bigger than just a space where communities can caffeinate.
“Fostering community has always been a byproduct of coffee shops,” Obiocha said. “However, The Happiness Lab wants to take this amazing byproduct and make it the focus of our shop, strengthening and growing this naturally occurring bond.”
