Brewed with respect
Jonathan Pascual was not a coffee drinker. In fact, he didn’t touch the stuff until he decided on a whim that he’d open a coffee shop someday. He was serving as a missionary in South America, right after college, when the lightbulb went off. The idea sounded cool, romantic, a fun excuse to hang out and talk to people.
Always intentional and with no experience whatsoever, the Atlanta native strolled into a Starbucks upon his return, asked if they were hiring, got a job as a barista and began drawing up a plan that would percolate for years.
That was about two decades ago. Today, Pascual is the owner of Opo Coffee in Decatur, a thriving mission-driven business that opened at the very end of 2023.
This isn’t the first coffee shop he got off the ground. He spent several years at Starbucks, where he went on to be a shift supervisor, before being tapped to manage and run a new coffee shop on somebody else’s dime. He later managed three locations for Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee, for which he helped design and build out one store. A celebrity chef, Hugh Acheson, enlisted Pascual to launch the coffee bar in what was Empire State South in Midtown. And eventually, 11 years ago and after incurring a lot of risk and debt, he opened his own coffee shop in downtown Kirkwood: Taproom.
So why Opo Coffee, too?
In the years since he first hatched this career path, Pascual took some time off to be a stay-at-home father as he and his wife had four kids, including twin 4-year-old girls adopted from Uganda. They helped start a church and focused on building community. He studied mission and value-driven businesses and got involved as an international coach. He was weaving purpose and intentionality into all aspects of his life, and he began to wonder what a coffee business could look like if, from the start, it was purposeful, too.
Opo is a polite way of saying “yes,” with respect, in Filipino. The name embodies what Pascual, born to immigrants from the Philippines, set out to create with his team when they registered the business idea in 2020.
He’d always worked with big banks, but he learned about Tandem Bank and decided to try something new for Opo’s checking account, since he was approaching everything about his new business differently.
Opo Coffee’s team is committed to making a positive impact on people around the world. They are certified to pay workers a living wage and signed a promise to donate 1% of the company’s revenue to environmental sustainability efforts. They source their coffee beans, which they roast on site several times a week, from smaller importers and have visited with one of their producers in his coffee fields of Honduras. And they were authorized by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) to train and certify people in brewing and barista skills. Their attitude: by empowering others, by sharing knowledge, they can create a collectively stronger industry, build positive relationships and help people succeed.
Since opening its doors, nearly 1,200 individuals have passed through the training lab at Opo, which is the only place in Georgia administering the SCA Coffee Skills Program, and one of the most active coffee training centers in the southeast. Included have been baristas sent from other coffee shops, future shop owners from India, a Czech woman who opened a coffee shop in Macedonia, and individuals simply trying to up their latte art game at home.
Getting this ambitious business off the ground required more funding than Pascual anticipated. He got creative, selling ownership shares to dozens of investors. And through Tandem, he secured one and then another SBA loan.
“You want a partner in this that you can trust. The process itself was great and didn’t bring me stress,” he said. “Whenever I call, I get a real person. I never feel like I’m begging for attention.”
Being treated well, and treating others well, matters to Pascual. It’s how he runs Opo, where the words “with respect” are emblazoned on the coffee shop’s mugs.
