It’s always teatime
A WHIMSICAL oasis of calm for parents where kids can play to their hearts’ delight.
This is the promise delivered by the Mad Hatter Hut, an Alice in Wonderland-inspired café located on Disraeli Rd — just a 10-minute walk from the centre of Suva City.
The business is the brainchild of Ela Alefaio and Lorraine Patterson, childhood friends who went on the motherhood journey together before eventually becoming business partners.
“We would go to cafes and we would always be looking over our shoulders, making sure that the kids were not breaking anything and we realised there wasn’t much of a space for kids with mothers to sit and exhale,” Ms Alefaio said, during an interview with this newspaper recently.
This experience gave birth to the idea of a childfriendly café, which opened its doors in March 2017.
Although the target market was parents with children, Ms Alefaio said, it had also attracted a good number of businesspeople.
“We were surprised at the crowd that came throughout the day because they weren’t our target market, they were the business crowd, people who would bring their meetings here because it wasn’t too far out of town,” she said.
Apart from being a small café known for its colourful cupcakes, the Mad Hatter Hut also has a retail space which features products made by local entrepreneurs such as Pepe & Pepe and Cheeky Jale.
“We thought to become a space where women who make things for kids could come and showcase their crafts.
“We feel a lot happier that we can support local women and also to shed light and highlight and elevate other women who do wonderful things.”
The café also provides catering services, and hosts events such as birthday parties and baby showers.
Setting up the business was not a piece of cake though.
Ms Alefaio said the process took them about seven months, with a few misunderstandings along the way about the required paperwork and steps to follow.
“No one really talked us through the process … we were feeling our way around,” she said, adding there was a need to have a hub which guided aspiring entrepreneurs. However, two years after setting up shop the Mad Hatter Hut is now part of a business accelerator program offered by the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation (FCEF).
FCEF’s Fiji Enterprise Engine is a nine-month program which has taken 14 small and medium enterprises under its wing, providing them with business advisory services including classroom sessions, access to local business coaches for one-on-one mentoring and opportunities for networking and sharing of ideas.
The program focuses on four key areas: strategic management, accounting and financial management, human resource management, and sales and marketing.
According to Steve Cordeiro, the program’s master trainer, a lot of businesses after they start reach a point where they either get bogged down or they collapse.
He added there were businesses that wanted to grow but sometimes this took a long time. The aim of the accelerator program, he said, was to shorten the growth time and to help businesses succeed in a more effective and efficient way.
Ms Alefaio said being part of the business accelerator program had helped her appreciate the importance of having a vision and staying true to it.
She added it had also boosted her confidence and pushed her outside her comfort zone, allowing her to share her story with other businesspeople.
Another benefit of the program, she said, was having a space where entrepreneurs could discuss their difficulties and insecurities as well as collaborate on business ideas — “it’s great because it’s almost like I belong to a business family”.
Next on the agenda for the business is to set up its own website, including a blog to share the experiences of staff members.
Meanwhile, the tea party continues at the Mad Hatter Hut for those who choose to slide down the rabbit hole like Alice from Lewis Carroll’s beloved children’s book.
We would go to cafes and we would always be looking over our shoulders, making sure that the kids were not breaking anything and we realised there wasn’t much of a space for kids with mothers to sit and exhale – Ela Alefaio