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Takeaway products will soon be available from the mobile café of hospitality management students

Published on 15.6.2021
Tampere University of Applied Sciences
cafe Nappa TAMK
Nella Kumpulainen, Jenni Marjamäki and Tarja-Katariina Stepanova, third-year hospitality management students at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, possess essential qualities needed in entrepreneurship: determination and courage. Cafe Nappaa, a mobile café run by the trio, follows the customers wherever they are.

“It is worth believing in your dreams, asking boldly for advice and explaining what you are doing to make your dreams come true,” they say. This is the trio’s advice to students who have their own dreams.

The name of the mobile café Café Nappa communicates the ease and smoothness of the service. At the mobile café, customers can grab their takeaway coffees as if from a traveling marketplace cafeteria.

“The idea is to travel around Tampere Region in as many municipalities as possible. We will naturally visit different places in Tampere and possibly even Lahti because that’s where we come from. Let’s see what we will end up doing this summer!” they say.

Café name connotes ease and smoothness of service

The students’ original plan for a café was canceled for reasons beyond their control so they had to change their plans quickly. At that time, the opening of the café was only three months away.

“Fortunately, the new President of TAMK, Tapio Kujala, came up with the idea of a mobile café. The President’s idea turned out to be customer-oriented and modern because it serves customers wherever they are during the high season,” Kumpulainen, Marjamäki and Stepanova said.

They had to put the idea into practice and find a suitable van for the café. Their perseverance was tested many times along the way as they were unable to find a van at first and the situation was already looking bleak.

“Then we asked the CEO of Nordic Gourmet Oy to become our mentor. Luckily, he helped us find a van used at festivals that met our needs,” the trio say relieved.

Future hospitality management students will also be able to rent the mobile café from TAMK.

“After us, the van will be used by TAMK’s hospitality management students and it will be adapted for the needs arising from new ideas in the future,” the trio say.

Mobile café joins the students’ strengths

The trio has solid expertise to run the mobile café. The products they sell are also made at TAMK’s Catering Studio, meaning that they are made by students. The students are pleased that the café van has clean surfaces and lots of equipment.

“We are lucky that instead of a home kitchen, we can prepare our products at the TAMK Catering Studio, which we rent, and which has nice and proper equipment and facilities,” the young entrepreneurs enthuse.

Kumpulainen, who has dreamed of having her own café since secondary school, has seized the opportunity to become an entrepreneur in the cooperative and invited two other restaurant management students to join the endeavour. Kumpulainen is a trained pastry chef, so she is responsible for product design.

“My dream of starting my own coffee shop in high school faded at upper secondary school until I met Kumpulainen at TAMK's hospitality management studies. Then the idea became more focused and she got me involved in this project,” Stepanova says.

Furthermore, they also got Marjamäki to join them in realising their cafeteria dream. Marjamäki has a cookery degree and Stepanova has extensive knowledge of different restaurants so she handles the administrative side of the business.

Joy from a unique project

Senior Lecturer Riitta Brännare, a lecturer in service business at TAMK, hopes to find new entrepreneurs for the co-operative every summer. At the other times of the year, the mobile café can be used by the hospitality management students in different courses as an extended learning environment and part of the Catering Studio. She emphasises that the van is an advertisement for the degree programme and TAMK, which means that it has marketing value.

“This is a low-risk opportunity to try out entrepreneurship, as TAMK owns the Tampere Restaurant Co-operative, which is offering the opportunity to try entrepreneurship in the summer café,” the trio from Café Nappa say.

Brännare describes the trio as determined because their attitude has set an example of what can be achieved by not giving up.

“It has been a pleasure to guide them because many others would already have given up because of the setbacks on the way. I wish them good experiences from the summer café!

According to Brännare, this is the fourth year when students can try entrepreneurship in the summer café co-operative. The activities are linked to the Idea to Enterprise course where the students came up with the business idea.

The students say that they will run the mobile café until the end of September and even longer if the weather permits. They also plan to make the most of the Christmas season.

“A big thank you goes to TAMK, our stakeholders, and the people who have helped us on this journey! We would not be here without TAMK’s support,” the trio say.

 

Further information:

You can follow Cafe Nappaa on Instagram and Facebook @cafenappaa as well as on internet www.cafenappaa.fi, resto.osk [at] outlook.com, tel. +358 (041)40 190 968

Riitta Brännäre, Senior Lecturer, Business Operations, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, riitta.brannare [at] tuni.fi,  tel. +358 (050)40 190 598

 

Text: Arja Lundan
Photo: Café Nappa