(upbeat music) - [ Cyrus Ausar] No one has ever heard of a mental health cafe.

You come in here and when you leave, you will feel better.

(upbeat music) (music fades out) - What you want to get?

My name is Cyrus Ausar.

I'm the owner of the Greatness Cafe, which is a mental health cafe that helps people with their mind and body.

The journey to the Greatness Cafe started about eight years ago when I was trying to improve myself.

It started with foods, it started with reading, it started with affirmations.

- Say, I am brave.

- Brave.

- [Cyrus] Brave, okay.

- Good job.

- [Cyrus] So I wanted to figure how can I take how I improve myself and put that within the business.

We wanted to create a community hub which is the same goal as a museum.

So we felt like that partnership would be perfect.

The affirmations are in the menu.

I am great, is a smoothie.

I am strong, is a sandwich.

- I'm gonna be honest, I am honest.

- [Cyrus] And even when you drink it, it is gonna say your name.

Andy is smart, Destin is great.

And by the time they finish it, you never know how many times they will read that.

- Destin is great.

- [Cyrus] Across the street, it was somebody using our cup because it had their name with the affirmation, they were just using it as regular dish, like now it's just their regular dishes because it had the the affirmation with their name.

I've had people that's 65 years old that just call the smoothie by Cherry Mango.

And I'm saying, "It's called I am great now".

"I want the Cherry Mango" and I forced them to say the affirmation.

Came back 30 minutes later in tears saying, "This is the first time I talked positive to myself and I don't even remember".

Same thing with young kids coming in.

They don't even want to order the I am smart, because they believe it doesn't apply to them.

So we have conversations about how they truly are smart.

We have the affirmation workbook that teach kids positive self talk.

We have another where it's a career choice workbook for high school and college, and a positive staff that all have service based backgrounds.

It's one of our workers here, Alyssa she has a woman empowerment program.

Then all of them are free.

People in Massillon definitely notice the fresh food.

- [Worker] This is just the vegetables that's going into the chickpea tuna.

- [Cyrus] All natural ingredients.

We've squeezed the orange juice in the mornings, the flash frozen fruits, so that's just the whole concept in the nutshell, giving people the best mental and giving them the best physical.

And I said it from the beginning, it was some push.

It was, "Ah, I don't know if that will work".

Now that it's working very well, we just received, even from the Mayor, Small Business of the Year Award in less than a year.

I believe that this will expand beyond Massillon, Ohio into other communities as an introductory to mental health.

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