Andrew, this is so fun.

Thank you for having us here.

Very excited.

Love the store.

I'm excited.

It's so beautiful.

Thank you.

So at what point did your family realize that you were dropping out of college in order to pursue this?

What were they thinking you were thinking?

That was a crazy time in my life.

I was two classes away from graduating.

I never told my parents I was dropping out.

I would wake up in the morning, get in my car, drive to the end of the block, wait till they left to work, go back home and start like preparing stuff to bake.

Yeah.

Eventually my mom came home early one day, found me, and I got caught.

It was not a great day in that household.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My dad was not happy at all.

Yeah, yeah I bet.

My mom, I feel like most Latino moms are a little more supportive than the husbands.

Yeah.

So my dad, he was furious, but eventually he came around.

It was a oneman show for a long time.

I was taking the phone calls, I was making the dough, making the cookies, driving to the houses, delivering.

It was an intense couple, couple years of my life.

But were you already a baker?

Because that's a big, you know, somebody else might say, I'm gonna hire somebody to do that.

Why did you think you could bake the cookies?

Well, I was a broke college student, so I definitely couldn't hire anybody.

But I just started picking up on YouTube, reading up online how to bake.

But that's part of the fun about it, just going in the kitchen and having a good time.

Obviously sprinkles were a really big part of your concept because it's in the tables.

I love sprinkles.

It's on the walls.

They're colorful.

They're fine though.

Who doesn't love to bite into that sprinkles?

They make you happy.

Absolutely.

So what's the most popular, the hottest seller?

So we have three that are always fighting for the top.

It's between the chocolate chip, the cookies and cream and the birthday cake.

I feel like anytime a child comes in and they see the rainbow sprinkles, it's like, I need that.

That's it.

Yeah.

So this is one of the top three for sure.

The cookies are really unique.

So talk about your concept for the cookies, because when I talk to people about Night Owl, a lot of people, the first thing they say is, oh, that Ave Maria cookie, you have to try it.

So talk about the concept, 'cause it's not just come in and get a chocolate chip cookie.

It's really beyond that.

Absolutely.

So when I think of Night Owl and the flavors that I create, it's more about the nostalgia factor behind it.

With every bite I want to be taken back to my childhood.

So I'm first generation Cuban American, so of course the Ava Maria, I grew up on .

Growing up I loved cereal.

So Fruity Pebbles, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, just everything that's gonna take me back to my childhood.

I want to share that with, with everybody.

Okay.

So what's in a birthday cake?

So birthday cake, it is chocolate chips, milk chocolate rolled in sprinkles, and it has a ice cream cheese drizzle on top.

So every order gets warmed up, right?

Absolutely.

It needs to be warm by the time you bite in it's a nice warm cookie.

Every day my grandma makes the dough herself.

It takes lots of time and love.

It goes from there into the walk in fridge where it stays at least 24 hours.

After that, we start talking them.

From there, it gets baked and sent to the stores.

You need money to do all of this.

So let's talk about the entrepreneurial part 'cause people are watching this.

They wanna launch their own concept, they have their own ideas, but how do you get started?

So walk us through that process of getting people to believe in you and get the money, the seed money or investors to make it happen.

Looking back, that was probably one of my hardest times in my life.

I didn't come from money, so I had to see if I could apply for a loan.

Nobody wanted to give a 20 year old loan who had no assets, no equity.

So I had to save up every single penny.

I wanted to give up so many times.

I was miserable, I was working seven days a week.

Listen, my parents told me I was crazy.

My friends told me I was crazy.

The banks didn't want to give me money.

But when everybody doesn't want to necessarily support you, you still have to figure out a way to get it done.

So what did you do?

How did you get some of that funding?

So, lucky enough, my parents still let me use their kitchen.

So I was able to bake the cookies in my parents' kitchen, deliver it from there.

My first lease I signed with $5,000 in my bank account.

Thinking $5,000 is gonna be able to get me through a full buildout.

I had a full year and a half on that lease where I was just burning cash just 'cause I had to pay rent with no kitchen.

But eventually I was able to save up enough to afford to fit those ovens.

So afford to put the tables and then the plumbing and everything that needed to get done.

I mean, you had not been a businessman before.

You were a 20 year old kid, relatively when you started this.

So what surprised you the most?

What did you learn along the way?

I was a business major and nothing I learned in school applied to everything I had to do in life.

I mean, it was wild.

Just the amount of bureaucracy, the amount of things you had to go through to get a business open.

It's not easy.

And people say all the time, if it was easy, everybody would do it.

It is a hundred percent true, but the best things in life you have to strive through and you have to hustle for.

We have the s'mores here.

It's a chocolate base of chocolate chips and graham crackers.

And of course we need some marshmallow.

Yeah.

So then I'm gonna scoop sum up.

Nice little torch.

Look at that.

And you got your toasted marshmallow.

Amazing.

So when you pull.

Yeah, it, it's a nice and gooey.

How many stores do you have now?

Right now we have five open with another four building out.

Wow.

That's crazy.

Did you ever imagine that when you started, you're cooking in your mom's kitchen, you would be where you are now?

I'm gonna get emotional just thinking about this and it's already happening.

Yeah.

I never in a million years would've thought this would happen today.

But we were doing national shipping and it got wild, especially when COVID hit 'cause people didn't wanna leave their house.

We had to take little hiatus.

We got everything together and we're finally back to national shipping.

We're on day five and we've already delivered to 25 states.

That's incredible.

That's exciting.

It's a wild, honestly.

And how did they hear about it?

Just the Instagram thing again.?

Social media.

I love social media.

You have people who were fans obviously, and we've talked about how it really took off because of Instagram.

So kind of walk us through when that happened.

When you started Instagram really wasn't a thing or that popular at the time, but that's really helped your business, has it not?

Yes, absolutely.

So when I started Instagram was very different.

It was a new social media platform.

I realized if we make these cookies Instagrammable, that people are gonna wanna share this.

So I bought these boxes so they could showcase how pretty these cookies were.

They were clear, a little expensive, but we saw return to marketing with every order that was posted we get maybe 10 orders from that and everything was organic and pretty.

At some point you wanted to be really transparent, honest with your customers that you're a member of the LGBTQ plus community.

So walk us through that and how did that sort of change or did it change anything in your business and how you approached what you do?

That was a very hard time in my life.

I came out a little later in life at 25.

I was scared to see what was gonna happen with the community, would they stopped supporting, would they not?

And it was so beautiful to see that they just supported in droves.

What I learned is, as a business owner, building connections and in relationships with your guests and your community, if you're authentic and you're yourself, people are gonna wanna support you.

Once that happened, I realized, well, why don't we try to get more, give back to the community some more.

Why don't we start making, raising some money for, for charities like the Trevor Project.

let's do whatever we can in this community to give back.

I've been so fortunate enough to have the community support me.

Why should I be able to do the same for them?

What is your vision for the future?

So by the end of this year, we're gonna have our 10th location open.

We're also starting to franchise.

We're gonna be franchising this year.

So by next year we should be pretty far along and hopefully be across the country.

So what advice would you have for budding entrepreneurs?

If you have a dream, follow it.

That's the most important thing.

You're gonna have people that might not believe, but as long as you have that passion, it's gonna shine through.

Follow your dreams.