Vibe Coffee House and Café officially opened in 2021 to educate the world through the global love of coffee. Owner Carlton McLellan travels the world for his job, and he has always been drawn to coffee houses.
“Because I found them as places, no matter what your mood is there is always a seat or place for you to sit relax or socialize or do whatever you need to do that day,” says McLellan.
Vibe’s focus is on coffee with an African origin, but they have beans from different parts of the world. They want to use coffee as a catalyst for creativity and inspiration.
“Coffee shops are places where you can see a jazz artist playing at any given time, you can see someone do spoken word, you can see an artist painting, you can see people sitting around playing games. So just, Coffee houses for me, no matter where I go in the world have always just been cultural hubs of things and people and that's what I wanted to create here in downtown Lima.”
Head down to the Legacy Arts Building and you find a place that fosters creativity, dreams, and collaboration. Alter Ego Comics brings the stories, Purple Feet has the wine, and Rustgaze Records and Legacy Sound have the music. After traveling with a band for years and developing his own music path, Omar Zehery came back to Lima and had an epiphany to help local musicians capture their passion.
“Meeting really talented people that were coming up with great things, great songs, great music, but didn’t really know what to do with that,” says Zehery. “And I just come out of 15 years of doing that thing and I was excited by the opportunity to develop something here in my hometown.”
Zehery says if artists have the support in their hometown, they can develop their talents there before taking their talents to the big cities.
“I feel like we have the potential, we just need the people to nurture those types of creative people to want them to stay here and to realize that they can pursue their passions in a town like ours,” adds Zehery. “It has been a passion project of ours and it has been a long time coming. But it is an easy thing for us to do because we really believe in the people that we work with.”
Those are the finalist for the Emerging Business of the Year Award.
