Good Day Uncut: Vault + Vine

This is still bothering her. This is a lasting scar that's existed. It is trauma. Love y'all. Appreciate you both spending some time with us. Hope we didn't give you the ick. Follow you on social media. Check out your tour. Yes, man. Come on, this is a punchline. November 25th. Nice. It's going to be crazy. Crazy. Follow you on social. Nicole is Nick with a K. Yeah, go. Have a good one. Okay. Philadelphia, we are uncut. Welcome to another episode of uncut, we up in East Falls neighborhood of the city man, it's beautiful out here, the sun is shining bright, I figured you know what man, why don't I stop by, this place is called Volt and Vine. Hold on, let me switch this around, I can see it, give you all a view of the place man, they do coffee flowers plant huge community space we got uh Diana and Brianna who are sisters who own this space and so we're gonna come over here, We're going to get to know them real quick, and they're going to talk about the space. They're going to talk about all the things that this space brings to the community and why they got this space up and running. So, first of all, let me introduce Diana Baillet. Hello. Diana Baillet. So, Diana, real quick, talk to me about Volt and Vine, and what is it, and what are you guys doing out here? So, Volt and Vine, we're essentially four businesses in one. We are a cafe, a certified greenhouse nursery, a florist, and a retail consignment shop. I always have a hard time answering that question, mainly because I feel like it's very hard to put us in any one box. But we are a community-oriented business. As you can see, we have a community fridge that we have take what you need, leave what you can. The pantry is actually behind you for all of the dry goods, and that is something that we like to do for the community. We actually have a delivery that's coming right now. Right, look at this. Perfect timing. So, we have a delivery coming in that we're going to be putting those in. But we're actually going to get out of her way and come inside, if you don't mind, so that that fridge can get full. All right. So, come on in. That'll get filled and cleaned right now. And we'll step in. Here we have Vault and Vine. When you come in, you'll be greeted by florals because, like I said, we are florists. You have our greenhouse there, our larger greenhouse. and then on this side you have our smaller greenhouse cafe um free seating and this is our cafe here when you come around you'll see we have a whole retail consignment shop a lot of the things that we have are made by local artists if they're not made in-house all right let's pause for a second all right and just talk to me about the idea first of all where's the name what's the the Vault and Vine what's behind the name the vault is the vaulted ceilings above us and the vine can't tell they're just every vaulted ceilings above us and then we have and the vines are just a part of who we are um so vault and vine literally it's the building and the plants that accompany everything in the building and they literally live everywhere all right so just real quick talk to us about how you and your sister found yourselves in the space So actually, we acquired this business. It was owned by a local florist who decided to move into a larger space. And post-COVID, she just, she didn't want to do this anymore. I was a regular and I also taught upstairs and I decided that I didn't want to see this business close. I twisted my sister's arm and I told her that we had to make sure it stayed in the community. um several months later no plan no financing no nothing several months later we figured out how to make it happen and we've been here for four years now and so in four years y'all have got it was all these things already in here when y'all came in the coffee shop so yes but not to this extent we kind of expanded the um cafe a little bit we expanded the menu we kind of put our own flair on it um we we brought a little bit of our own to it we didn't have the in-house seating so we made sure that there was seating so people could sit and stay and we brought a little bit of our own we make our own candles in house we make a lot of things that you'll see on the shelf or we have local artists we did already have local artists but things being made in house that wasn't something that already happened okay you said there's extra community space right there's a spot upstairs let's take a look at that so we do have seating out back um where we do have a few people out there, but what's near and dear to my heart is upstairs. When I was, I first had my first child, I would take her into cafes to literally suck the air out of her. So what I wanted to do was create a space where parents know that they can come with their children and people know that families are welcome. So this space was born. We partner with another local business named Rutabaga Rutabaga is a toy library here in the neighborhood and it literally is what it sounds like you can check out toys and not have to always purchase for your children so they come in they refresh the space they bring like take away old toys bring new ones they do have um they have a great business model as a parent you don't always want that stuff in your house right so their business model allows you to have new toys for your children check them out just like you would a book in the library take it back and check something else out this space they do help us maintain now so i'm gonna assume this is like a highly active space over here see the young man okay earlier yes it is and also especially in bad weather people are always looking for a place to commune we like to think of ourselves as a third space a lot of places don't have that anymore like where you can just learn to like be around your neighbors have regular conversation just being existing in the same space that doesn't exist very much anywhere um so we we pride ourselves on being that we have local students what's this overhead like a little netted greenhouse a little bit of a quarantine area so we do well we have plants that need a little extra care um and we don't want them necessarily cross-contaminating other plants they end up in here um and especially it's going into the colder months we have another greenhouse outside but they're not going to be able to live outside for much longer so we bring them in here we treat them whether it's for bugs or different things like that but we want to make sure that they stay separate from our healthy plants so it really is it's quarantine makes sense we literally make sure that there's access to everything in the community here we have it up here but we also have downstairs all the things that are happening in the community as long as it is beneficial to the neighborhood people are allowed to put up whatever they want to put up that's what's happening i hit the wrong button so look here's the deal man so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a quick commercial break we're gonna take two minutes we're gonna go back downstairs we'll get introduced to the cafe we'll get introduced to the greenhouse we're gonna introduce some of the vines that are moving all over the place all the stuff that y'all are doing in that back room plants and doing bouquets i don't even know what y'all are doing back there we'll find out y'all give us two minutes we'll be right back we're at Vault and Vine today plants coffee books toys flowers i don't even know if you need anything else in your life y'all say we'll see y'all in two minutes all right y'all welcome back to Vault and Vine good day we're hanging out in the uh plant cafe neighborhood area so i'm going over here with Deanna and she's gonna excuse me for that's all Jamming it up. There's Deanna's, there's Diana's, there's... It's Ron, I'm one of seven. I get to say hey you and you know what your name is. Alright, so look. So, you talked about, this is the cafe first of all. Look at this place. It's beautiful, right? And then we got the little outdoor space here. So, this is just, it's another greenhouse, but it also doubles as a spot where people sit and enjoy. Absolutely. So, you can sit amongst the plants. It's very popular. Just walk out with me because I can't hear you if you're saying stuff It's very popular in the wintertime especially When people are experiencing what they call seasonal affective disorder Where you don't have enough green space around It's not warm enough for everybody So a lot of people like to sit in here Just to kind of get over their winter blues For lack of a better way of putting it So this is a very popular space But, you know, it's not that big as you can see which is why we have the additional seating upstairs but i i myself like to sit in here quite a bit especially in the wintertime but yeah it's really it's seating but we also have our plants and everything in here is also for sale just like the other greenhouse which we will go in um but i mean it's just a cool place to hang out i think i think it's a great social space man, like I need a little greenhouse with tables and chairs at my crib i know right Like, you wouldn't want this. I know, right? So let's step inside and check out the cafe real quick, right? We serve coffee, tea. We do smoothies, which we make our smoothies from fruit. We don't use purees or anything like that. They are actually fruit smoothies. We do make some things in-house, some wraps, sandwiches, our parfaits. I don't know. Do you do dairy? Parfait? I do dairy, but parfaits? I'm telling you. You got to have one of our parfaits. You've never had one like this before. All right. And then all your sweets, are they all locally? They come from a lot of different local places, which all of our offerneal is almost sold out for the day. But they come from a lot of different local places. One particular right now, our sweet potato loaf comes from a local baker, Savory by Chanel. This is her first time in a retail space. She is another local black woman. Our teas are made by Sabali Tea Co. And she is also another local black woman. We sell her teas also retail bags, but that's what we use behind the cafe. Our coffee comes from Cafe Roasters, which is a local coffee company. And then our decaf comes from Green Street Coffee, which is another local coffee company. So you try to keep it all as local as possible. And that's the point. Like a local economy. Like we all are in it together. And if you can be local as much as possible, we all support each other. And that kind of brings us full circle with this whole community building and community movement and keeping everybody running together. We try to be deliberate. We try to be deliberate. Like, we have another community wall here where it tells you what's going on. We promote as many other local businesses as possible, all of that. So, that's the purpose. That's the goal. I see a customer standing over there. I don't want to hold it up. So, I'm going to slide out. So, you can slide in here, and then we'll come back, and you can talk to me about getting one of these sweet potatoes. A sweet potato souffle latte. Yes, I know pumpkin spice is what's popular normally, but a sweet potato girl, through and through. I don't know if it's cultural or what. So I played with this recipe for about two months before we got it right. So I'm going to have you try sweet potato souffle latte. All right, what goes into making the sweet potato souffle latte? It is actual sweet potato puree, and then we put some other spices in there. we have some cinnamon we have a maple spice um syrup and then some toasted marshmallow and then we put that in a shot of espresso okay steam up some some milk we're gonna have you try one forward to this like is it a is it a task like how long does it take for her to put this together oh it's gonna take like a minute it's not gonna take a long at all all right so like Can we see it? It's already curried and everything. You know what? Boy, it's your top secret. Like, you may not want anybody to see. You know what? You're probably right. How it goes down. It took me too long to figure that out. But I'ma let you, I'ma let you. All right, well, tell her to get started making on the drink. All right, are you okay with milk? Yeah, I'm okay with milk. All right, we're gonna go ahead and get, you want it hot or iced? That's a good question, because it's hot in here right now. You want an iced one? What tastes better? I feel like hot is better. I drink hot all the time. Don't ask me that because I don't care because it's 1,000 degrees outside. I'm still doing hot. Right, but like hot brings out more of the flavor than the cold, right? It makes it creamier and everything. All right, let's do it hot because that's the way it was originally meant to be, right? Yes, absolutely. All right, let's do the original. So here, I'm going to flip this over so we can see her working on it. Okay. All right, Allie's about to, she's got one drink coming out, but she's about to make your drink. You got to say it a little closer because like I said, I forgot the cable at the crib. No worries. So Allie's about to make your drink right now. she's putting another person's drink out first but she's about to put that together we're gonna flip back over to her when she's about to start your milk all right you let me know when you're ready to go and i'll come over there and bother you in the meantime in between time we're gonna flip over here um what do we got here so remember i said we do other local cafes and stuff like that cafe roasters is who make our coffee behind the bar and our decaf is by green street these are all locals i've actually met the cafe roaster people they're super cool people i love them and then we have over here um some other locals so sabali tico that's who does our um tea behind the bar and then we have we be brothers honey that's actually they're also a local honey vendor so we try very hard to have local vendors on our so how do you how do you find all these vendors do they find you or do you go out searching for them like a little bit of both Sometimes people walk in, they email, different things like that. Sometimes it's by relationship. Funny enough, our tea vendor, she actually was the admin at my student's summer camp several years ago. And she told me that she went to school to be a tea sommelier and wanted us to try her teas. And then it just kind of kept going from there. And now she's the person that we have in our shop. Who knew that there were tea sommeliers? I thought they were just people who like tea like me, but no like this is a craft. It's a craft She went to school for she blends her teas. And where is she? She's local here in Philly? She's local here in Philly, here in the neighborhood actually. We might get her on next man. We gonna go to her lab. Tell her that we coming to her lab next because we want to see her put together a few things and come up with a few things and maybe she can make a blend just for me. you know what she just might I don't know she just might you see Mike always being greedy out what's on the shelf is not enough it's not enough all right she might say challenge accepted there you go there you go so where she will be at with the she's still busy we're good you're ready I think she's about to make your your latte yeah 12 ounces more than enough we got to come a little closer to all right so we got some sweet potato a little maple spice and toasted marshmallow she's going to steam up your milk i have one of our local vendors trying to sneak out the door right now we're doing a restart um when i say they're local they are truly local they come in they put their own stuff on the shelves they they really they're as much a part of the shop as anybody else um and we're gonna go through some of what's on the shelf so i can tell you who they are all right so let's do this right now while she's working on getting that uh sweet potato souffle latte up and running we're gonna take another quick two minute commercial break we'll come back on the other side we'll have a latte going we'll go check out the other greenhouse and we'll figure out what else they got going on in here it's like a hundred things going on here at the same time the good day uncut i just got sweet potato souffle latte all up and running and ready to go with the cute little rabbit cup look at that jumping over everybody that's what they do over there vaulting right jumping over all the other coffee shops and flower shops let me see what this is doing yo that's really good i can taste the sweet potato i can taste the marshmallow the little burnt marshmallow business in there toasted oh it's not burnt it's not burnt It's not burnt, guys. In my house, it's burnt. That one behind is toasted. All right, hold on. Do you mind if I let that sit there while we run through the rest of the show? All right, so listen. So where are we going now? You said you got the retail part. Let's go take me over there. I'm going to take you around a little bit. So we have retail a little bit of everywhere, but I just want to point out we have a lot of different local artists. This is Elam Designs. She hand-paints all of her jewelry here. Survivors Alliance, They actually are, they're a group of survivors of domestic violence who are learning skills of making jewelry and different things like that to actually be able to escape their abusers. We have Aisha Likes It, who is another local jewelry maker here. And we also have Silica Designs, all local there, mostly black women artists in this area. We have, oh, sorry, we have DP Zines. that's who just snuck out and maggie martin we have space's book um which shameless plug is written by my husband omari baye it's a book uh for about feeling about feelings for children we have golden water co uh chartel is the founder and maker of golden water co she makes body butters soaps bath bombs and everything like that natural handmade and avery another local black owned maker how do you even keep track and keep up like y'all got a lot of stuff in it um it's all up here um but once you once you build these relationships with people it's kind of hard to forget the people that you know uh plus like i said they're all local they bring their stuff in we know who they are it just when you care about people when they care about you don't forget so some of them we're already here a lot of them we cultivated relationships with over the years but everybody that's on the shelf they're on the shelf for a reason they're they're hand-made they're local they support the environment like they literally their business model it works with our business model mind your grace another uh black woman um maker like it's a lot of different ones we have Native Sons sorry my cell phone's ringing in the background all right let's let's go into this other green room because we're gonna mess around run out of time but you're running through everybody i'm sorry everything it's all good it's all good this is our larger greenhouse um this is where the majority of our plants live especially in the wintertime we have a cacti succulent table we have a lot of uh different types of plants going on back here The table all the way in the back is our pet safe table. A lot of our customers, they want plants that are safe for their pets. So we specifically cultivated a table for them, so they don't even need to think about it. They don't need to ask. Their fur babies, if they actually eat any of these plants, they will be okay. So we have a whole table dedicated to just pet safe plants. And I think that's something like, I mean, I'm not a pet guy. so I would have never even given that any consideration right like there's certain plants that I can't have in the house you can have them but if they eat them they might get sick with these plants if they eat them they just eat your plant they just eat your plant so even though they can come back and get another one but we make sure I'm a plant person, I'm a plant person and I'm a pet person so we also we do allow dogs in here sometimes they nibble on plants that kind of stuff so it came to be over the years when we realized that's what we were looking for so we can make it easy on us and them so how did you yourself so have you always been a plant person and a coffee person and a no trinkets person and a no um all of this is self-taught um coffee i didn't start drinking coffee till i had kids kids will make you drink coffee and then i became a coffee snob um plants plants i always felt like they grounded me i was the kid that would walk around barefoot in the grass and everybody else would look at me like i was a little bit different but my mom's from Jamaica so we all kind of walked around barefoot um but yeah i didn't care who was looking i would just walk around like i think grounded it made me so grounded so plants yes coffee no trinkets i had to learn um i had to figure out what people wanted and just go from there all right so look here we got to take one more commercial break so we're gonna take another minute and a half we'll keep looking at the greenhouse we're gonna go back inside take a quick look at in the back where y'all do what are y'all doing bouquets we'll see that part of the business we'll see y'all on the other side of the break we got a minute and a half y'all hang out with us we'll be right back all right y'all so now we're in the back of the house where the bouquets we're in the back of the house here where the bouquets are being made see some of the other work that they do over here vault and vine um i'm gonna spin around for a second because there's another sister that's involved with this vault and vine game brianna she over here hiding though she tried to dip on us for the whole hour for the whole half hour but we didn't caught up to her now she back here putting together some bouquets so just talk to me about real quick about this part of the business and the bouquet making yeah system i'm making up words to try to fill a sentence that really got nothing to do with each other but you get i actually joked to say i'm half a florist because my sister always makes my bucket for me today Elle made my bucket for me but um this is the part of the business that um as you as my sister told you we acquired this business um i knew nothing about making bouquets before anything about flowers. But it was such a wonderful aspect of the business, we had to keep it. So here we are, I have learned quite a bit. Again, our head florist Elle has told me a lot about what she does. And now I am very confident in making bouquets and arrangements for our customers. Look at that. So does that make you feel like, my wife is always like, yo, Mike, man, you should bring some flowers over because it just makes the house look nice, right? To walk into the house and see fresh flowers sitting on the table like putting them together do you get that same kind of satisfaction like this we just see a bunch of flowers laying on the table once you put them together into a bouquet it kind of changes