A new family-owned coffee shop has opened in downtown Lakeland. Amonie Jo’s International Coffee & Delights began serving customers at 401 South Florida Avenue on March 25.
Owner Patrice Williams, 35, said her shop — under the Curated Collective and across from Bank of America — is known for its organic coffee, friendly vibe and savory food offerings.
“I’m very excited …The support that we’ve been shown already. It adds to the excitement,” Williams said.
Born in Nassau, Bahamas, and of Haitian descent, Williams said she adds some unique flavors to the coffee.
“We now have a cafe creole blend that goes back to my roots of being Haitian. We like to add a lot of spice in our things; not like pepper spice, but cinnamon spice. Our cafe creole blend has that — a taste of the islands,” said Williams, who added the shop gets its coffee from Ethos Coffee Roasters, also located in downtown Lakeland.
“Our grandmother taught us how the warmth of a cup of coffee could be translated into love,” Williams wrote in a social media post. “Our grandmother made a pot of coffee every morning and shared it with her neighbors.”
‘A happy place’
The shop has a vibrant vibe, with the walls and furniture decked out in bright colors including lots of pink and yellow. There is space for about 10 people to gather.
“The space is unique. I wanted it to be a happy place. We’re big about people. We always have been. Our customers mean a lot to us. They get to know us pretty personally and we get to know them,” Williams said.
Click through the gallery below to see the space.
The shop is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. It also serves breakfast toasts, pastries and varying lunch specials, from fried rice to a savory turkey-provolone-and-pepper melt.
Williams, who is also a realtor, said she chose to open the shop in Lakeland after one of her realtor friends directed her to the location at the corner of South Florida Avenue and Lime Street, which she considers to be ideal.
“This location is amazing. It’s definitely different (from) anything I’ve done before. We’ve always been on the outskirts … Being in downtown, you’re seen more. There’s foot traffic, there’s car traffic, and we’re on the corner so people notice us. It brings more business,” Williams said.
Williams is no stranger to coffee. She and her sisters Vasiah and Angie originally operated a mobile coffee shop, starting in January 2019. It used to be set up at the Winter Haven Farmers Market. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came, but Williams said they were able to keep the business afloat.
“Once the pandemic came, it was mostly all deliveries. We had no human contact. It lasted pretty long for a pandemic. We kept going,” Williams explained.
Around Christmas 2020, they opened a brick and mortar coffee shop in Winter Haven, but decided to close the shop about six months later after Williams became pregnant and her sister chose to work toward her dream job of becoming a firefighter.
“She started school heavily to finish up her firefighter (training). I had a baby. So we just decided it wasn’t a good time for business,” Williams explained. “The business always kept going. We would do a market to keep the name alive.”
The story behind the shop’s name
Williams is excited to serve the Lakeland community and is grateful her customers from Winter Haven and Lake Wales still stop by.
“It’s going really good. We’re actually busy…It’s been quite a buzz on social media,” Williams said.
The coffee shop is near and dear to her heart as she and her sisters created it in honor of their mother, Amonie Joseph, a mother of six who immigrated to the United States and cleaned homes and sold goods in order to create a comfortable lifestyle for her children. She died from ovarian cancer on Oct. 6, 2017. She was 48 years old.
“It brought us together to work on this business right after she passed. Within the same year, we started thinking of this business … It kept us together … We didn’t do that on purpose. We just wanted to do something in her honor, but it actually brought us close to heal and grieve together,” Williams said.
In the future, Williams said she’d like to create a coffee cart, where her coffee could be sold at special events such as weddings.
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