Meet Amy Collins | Entrepreneur, business owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amy Collins and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy, what is the most important factor behind your success?
As a startup in the food & drink industry, way back in 2015, we made a conscious decision to focus on the authenticity of food & drink offerings in our homeland, Australia. Our business, “Cup of Joey AZ” began as a food truck operation, successfully negotiated the COVID epidemic & then expanded into a cafe in a brick & mortar location.

Drawing on experiences of numerous American family members & friends who visited us in Sydney before we moved to the US in 2009, it was obvious they always enjoyed visits to cafes, bakeries & restaurants. Whether that was a “mom & pop” business or something larger, the regularity of comments about the food being fresh, the taste being “different” or the atmosphere enthralling them, we witnessed genuine warmth & engagement all the time.

So, with no family expertise in the food business, we were nevertheless well-informed about people in our world who marveled at how unique & authentic their experiences were in Australia. Of a few significant drivers in our business, maintaining “authenticity” in a foreign market was a matter we had total control over & upon which we focused from the get-go. That, combined with a rigid approach to engaging with “community” created significant horsepower for our business, generating growth & unusual opportunities.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
As stated earlier, our business, “Cup of Joey AZ”, began in 2015, commencing with a food truck & in 2022, we opened our first brick & mortar cafe. We pride ourselves on high quality casual Australian food, every drink is customized to personal preferences & our baked goods are always fresh. By design, we control every aspect of those processes & our business has been planned & developed so that it is scalable. We are currently in the second quarter of a 5 year plan to expand into a significant network of stores in Arizona; from Tucson in the south to the I-40 connection at Holbrook in the north.

In many ways, our business reinvented itself when the cafe was opened due to our focus on commerce, community & education. We have expanded our food & drink offerings, are still uniquely Australian-themed & our customer base is expanding quite rapidly via the use of social media & also “word of mouth”. Realizing the power of community, our mantra became “the purchase of a coffee is not a transaction but it is the start of a relationship”. Staff embraced the concept & our customer base, both new & old, always feel like they the “belong”. New customers who have visited Australia before they come see us, invariably tell us that our food & drink is just like “down there”. That is a real badge of honor for us but also evidences that our authenticity really does resonate with customers.

Our store location was previously a bank & the retail compound in which it is located was not strong in respect to food & drink. During our earlier years, we had undertaken visits & deliveries to various schools in the Mesa Public Schools District (MPS) as well as developing personal relationships with many of its personnel. During the course of those activities we became a strong donor to educational causes & a supporter of booster clubs. As the years passed, so too did our reputation as a good community citizen grow. The simultaneous impact on community & education was significant & allowed us to take root faster than might have been expected. It became very obvious to us, early in our journey, that while Mesa, AZ was a big city, it was actually a very small place.

In July, 2024, while we were celebrating our second year in the store, our first in a series of children’s books was published & the creative exercise brought people together who had not known each other 18 months earlier. During the book’s development, our customers & MPS staff were engaged at levels you would not typically experience in a cafe. In keeping with our community obligations, we identified a local neighborhood elementary school as the designated target for a donation tied to book sales. As a business process, we will be interested to see where this road will lead & how it will elevate “Cup of Joey AZ” in the consciousness of customers. While only early days, we were made aware that morale in the target school was lifted by being involved in the book, including regular updates along the way. Presuming success with this first venture, we are already planning our second book & have identified another school where we can positively impact.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Can we reimagine this question based on us being a cafe in Arizona, & the children’s book that we have just finished? The book highlights many destinations in Arizona & is designed to showcase those places to a global audience, many who will not understand that we are surrounded by a living desert.

The areas covered in our book are:

> the “Hole in the Rock” at Papago Park in Phoenix
> the “Desert Botanical Garden” in Phoenix
> the “Tonto Natural Bridge” (the biggest travertine arch in the world)
> the “Mogollon Rim” (an alpine forest that stretches over 200 miles)
> “Montezuma’s Castle”, built into limestone cliffs by Indigenous people 1,000+ years ago
> the “Verde Valley” area, comprising beautiful forest, rivers, streams & lakes
> the beautiful red rocks of Sedona
> the “Grand Canyon” & its majestic glass skywalk that extends over the canyon, 4,000 feet below
> “Saguaro Lake”, a large body of water used for recreation & water supply &
> the “Salt River” that feeds into Mesa, AZ from Saguaro Lake

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
In my case, family mentors were critically important to me during the development of “Cup of Joey AZ’s” business in the US.

By the time I graduated college in Sydney, as a cultural anthropologist, before moving to the US, I had become fascinated with “human dynamics”. Whether personal motivation drew on dreams or desires forged in me by family, or my own life, education & work experiences, or a combination thereof, I was intrigued by people who achieved success from humble beginnings. As a now seasoned entrepreneur, I am cognizant that fear, anxiety & uncertainty are natural elements in business success, so long as they are properly harnessed. Embracing & recognizing that developed a further personal critical skill; a heightened sense of anticipation.

I was fortunate that my father had been a successful executive banker in Australia before embarking on his own entrepreneurial journey of startup businesses in Australia & the US. In his case, he was not defined by a “finance” career but rather intrigue about possibilities because of what he learned as a banker & observing businesses he supported with loans. To that end, he found success in the US golf industry, the medical industry & now the food & beverage industry. My step-mother, an American, was a school teacher before moving to Australia & I watched her develop an educational network in Sydney via energy, self-confidence, dedication & perseverance. At the same time, she managed my father’s mortgage business “after hours”, on weekends & during vacations. In her earlier life, she had helped run the family’s gas station in Oklahoma & ran a successful political campaign for her father who was elected county commissioner.

So, from age 9, life was always vibrant because of what my father & mother were doing in their professional lives. I was exposed to discipline, aggravation, energy, frustration, success & creativity. Mostly, those aspects were normalized at a young age & I found myself immersed in activity that conveniently blended work & personal life. If my parents were ever fearful about “tomorrow” I never noticed it. Both were strong role models in terms of my education & being accountable for things within my control. As I moved through school into college, I developed skills of my own that have proven beneficial during my business journey in the US.

Website: https://www.cupofjoeyaz.com

Instagram: @cupofjoeyaz

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cupofjoeyAZ/

Other: “Joey Goes to Arizona” our first children’s book: https://a.co/d/7ZdCWvX

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cupofjoeyaz

Google Reviews: https://g.co/kgs/MDUfhhp