Aleksandra Brankov
(Photo Credit: Aleksandra Brankov)
Name: Aleksandra Brankov
Current Job: Founder of Cafilia
Favorite restaurant in town? I get most excited when I can go to Barroco for their arepas, which remind me of my Venezuelan friends, and Cleveland Vegan that has the tastiest vegan food in Cleveland and probably the state! (Try the vegan gyro!)
Favorite thing about Cleveland? I had some friends from Spain that visited in the summer of 2019, and we ended up going around and discovering many of Cleveland’s murals together! To this day, I still love looking at new murals that pop up around the city and beautify an old building, parking lot, or neighborhood. And of course, it goes without saying that having a lake that looks like an ocean right on our shores is pretty awesome!
Q: We are close to a year into quarantine, how have you been coping? It hasn’t been too bad, I think we’ve been doing pretty well in Ohio compared to some states. I have to admit though, during the initial shutdown between March and May I ended up watching all 8 seasons of Homeland in the evenings since all plans were canceled. No judging – it was the first time I ever did something like that!
Q: You’ve had an interesting career path from international consulting to jumping into entrepreneurship in mid-2017 and now with your startup Cafilia. Tell us more about it all and what made you decide to pursue entrepreneurship? I had a very unique and international career path leading up to my leap into entrepreneurship. After graduating college, I worked locally at a non-profit focused on international relations (CCWA) before moving to Europe. Soon after, I was humbly accepted into IE Business School, a Top 10 Business School worldwide, in Madrid, Spain for my Master’s in Business. This experience at IE and what followed really opened my eyes to the inspiring levels of excellence in business professionals and brilliance in the business world on a global scale. I was hired by an international consultancy in Madrid in a unique consulting role of working with its Co-Founder & Managing Director to learn the ins and outs of the business and prepare to open their first US-based office a couple of years later. I did strategy implementation consulting with global Fortune 500’s like BP, Santander Bank, Repsol, Pepsi, and more, and learned from incredible leaders that identified and cultivated my commercial and leadership skills. Once I moved back to the US, and with a couple startup experiences under my belt too, I decided to form my own LLC and continue consulting for my Madrid firm and other organizations I came across while pursuing local job market opportunities. After some time, the idea of Cafilia unexpectedly came to me and I decided to go with it!
Q: What is Cafilia and why did you decide to start it? Cafilia is a subscription service to local coffee shops that eliminates paper cup waste along the way. A great concept comparison would be to say it’s like the Classpass for local coffee shops. The way it works is a coffee aficionado would buy a monthly coffee subscription and their exclusive Cafilia travel mug, and once they receive their mug, they take it to any of the local coffee shops that are part of the Cafilia network to get their coffee cup subscription filled.
By building a two-sided platform that brings coffee drinkers and local coffee shops together, coffee drinkers are able to discover new shops and local coffee more easily with Cafilia, while exclusively supporting local and being effectively sustainable with their coffee habit. On the other hand, Cafilia helps local coffee shops by driving foot traffic to their stores and growing their visibility that they might not have otherwise had. All this leads to more sales, upselling opportunities, etc. You can imagine how especially important this is now, with local businesses being hit the hardest in this pandemic.
As for why I decided to start Cafilia, one day in February 2019 I was at a retreat with friends in the middle of nowhere in Canada and I noticed how they all brought their travel mugs and were using them daily there. Picking up one of those mugs, I thought, “is there a way people could be just as effective back home with reusing their travel mugs for coffee? What about if they buy this one travel mug with a plan and use it to get their coffee exclusively at local coffee shops so that local businesses are the ones that benefit?” And with some more refining, Cafilia was born! I finally launched my low-tech pilot in July 2020 and continue to test for product-market fit, while working on building the technology and community behind it.
Q: What have been the pros and cons of running your startup in Cleveland? When I decided to definitively pursue my idea of Cafilia full-time, it was June 2019. I didn’t necessarily know how I was going to do this on my own, but then just that same week I heard about Startup Scaleup, an event Jumpstart hosts every year for the entrepreneurial community in Cleveland. I felt like it was heaven-sent – I went to the event and was shocked to see how many organizations, resources, and people are really involved in the entrepreneurial community in Cleveland. I couldn’t have kicked off my startup journey in a better way. So for me, a big pro in building and launching my startup in Cleveland has been the community support that seems to be plentiful in ways of connections, advising, and events without the pretentiousness of the West Coast. I was accepted into Bounce’s Software Accelerator Program and UARF’s I-Corps program and have worked with advisors there, at Jumpstart, and at the Hispanic Business Center that have all been crucial to my planning and growth with Cafilia.
In terms of cons, to put it plainly, generally speaking Cleveland is still not at the same caliber of talent and resources as other larger US cities. It would be great to have even more advisors, mentors, etc. that have experience and exposure in other diverse and demanding markets and industries outside of NEO, because this simply brings a more well-rounded and valuable perspective to the entrepreneurial table.
Q: When COVID ends, where is your first vacation and why? Oh, the coveted travel topic. I’m quite international at heart, with my Serbian background and having lived in Europe for 6 years before moving back to Cleveland, so it’s an understatement to say that I can’t wait to travel internationally again. I’m sure my first trip will be to go back to Europe to see friends and family in England, Serbia, and Spain. I have a nephew I haven’t met yet because of COVID, and another one that I’ve missed out on most of his 2 year old life. Going to Europe fills up my soul every time!