E18 The Jitter Bus, New Haven's First Café on Wheels with Dan Barletta
Dan Barletta is one of the founders and owners of the mobile cafe, The Jitter Bus. Serving the New Haven community for almost 8 years now, the blacked out bus with artwork on it is a familiar site to locals. An idea that came from witnessing a ice cream truck and a love for coffee, The Jitter Bus started out as a simple idea. Through some hard work, perseverance, and learning some hard lessons, The Jitter Bus has become a staple downtown New Haven.
In this episode we talk about Dan's struggle with college and how a coffee shop on wheels gave him a purpose. We discuss what it was like to bring the idea to fruition, how they survived the pandemic, and their future plans of expanding to a brick and mortar coffee shop. We covered a lot in this episode but what I didn't mention was how good their dirty chai lattes are. If you've never had coffee from The Jitter Bus, you need to go check them out!
Topics we cover:
- New Havens first mobile café
- From being fired at Starbucks to entrepreneurship
- Not feeling like college was the right fit
- Starting a business with your friends
- The first year of business
- Vending at farmers markets
- Unexpected challenge of exploding an expresso machine
- Thinking outside the bus to survive the pandemic
Connect with The Jitter Bus:
- The bus can be found on corner of Hillhouse Ave. and Grove St. in downtown New Haven M-F and the Wooster Sq. farmers markets Sat mornings
- Follow The Jitter Bus on IG
- thejitterbus.com
Connect with me:
- Subscribe to my Substack
- Follow me on IG
- pleasantpodcasts.com
- If you would like to start your own podcast you can download my free Podcast Launch Roadmap to help you get started
