Cafe Du Pain

Judithe Registre is an investor (and co-founder alongside owner Marie Onyeani, pictured below) of Cafe Du Pain in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.  A Haitian-born, Jersey-raised world traveler, Judithe’s business operates numerous social initiatives as part of its mission to leverage the power of food as a humanizing force. Founded in 2018, Cafe Du Pain partners with local food pantries, churches, and nonprofits to support the community. In particular, the Cafe’s signature initiative is The Birthday Cake Project, which donates cakes to at-risk youths each month to celebrate their birthdays. 

In February of 2020, Judithe and Marie came to Pacific Community Ventures looking for help in co-managing the cafe and improving their business model to increase revenue. We paired them with Jarad, the Director of Infrastructure Accounting at a major tech company. 

Together, the pair began meeting to work on partnership challenges within the business, helping to smooth out communication within the team. Giving them the perspective they needed, Judithe explained that “Jarad’s genius is his ability to hold space and to listen and ask questions in such a way that gives me insight into my own reality.” In addition to this, Jarad acted as a sounding board for Judithe and her co-partner as they worked on a “break-even” analysis to reduce cost of goods. This helped to build capacity for understanding their finances in a way that allowed Judithe and Marie to move to the next level of their business: an adjacent line of pre-packaged frozen Haitian Kreyol hand-pies.

With luck and Jarad’s help, working on their line of consumer packaged goods (CPGs) will greatly reduce the difficulties of a daily baking operation by creating a significant dollar return. And what’s more, they hope these new options will bring greater diversity and equity to the grocery store and palates everywhere.