Noelle Scala of Cafe Belle in New York City
Noelle Scala
Owner: Cafe Belle
280 Mulberry St. (btw Prince & Houston) : New York, NY
Social: @CafeBelleNYC
Astrological Sign: Sagittarius (Scorpio cusp)
Fav Foods: Cheeseburgers
Current Book: Rereading “A Woman Destroyed” by Simone de Beauvoir (It’s my fav book. I’ve read it at least 6 times).
Quote: "The only way out is through.” - Robert Frost
“I want to share everything I love. I want everything in here to be good. Great atmosphere, good coffee, great cookies, awesome staff. I want people to have an all-around great experience.” - Noelle
Background
I love cookies. I think cookies are the most under appreciated dessert item out there. And that’s something Noelle and I both share. I fell in love with Café Belle one summer afternoon when I tried their pignoli cookies. I remember taking repeated bites thinking, “This is the best pignoli cookie I’ve ever had…I need to meet the rockstar that’s making them.”
Noelle is the owner of Café Belle. A small café, cookie and pastry shop on Mulberry Street in New York City’s, Little Italy. She grew up in her family’s business; a bakery in New Jersey and has taken her own journey back to her roots. After swearing to her parents she didn't' want the "bakery life", she went to college (the first member and woman in her family to graduate) and started her life in Public Relations. "I worked in Fashion P.R., I thought my life was going to be Sex In The City. It wasn’t that. I'm from Jersey and appreciate down to earth people..fashion wasn’t all I thought it was going to be, there was no realness. After a while it was exhausting".
After getting married and moving back to NJ, she quickly realized the suburban life wasn’t for her, she moved back to New York City and ended up in Little Italy. It was at this time that she started learning the history of the neighborhood and digging a little deeper. She was watching the shops in her hood close their doors and turn into drugstores and more big business. " I was learning the history of this neighborhood and all the immigrants that came here, and just in the 3 blocks surrounding us..all the history of it and then thinking, damn no one from our generation is really interested in keeping this going...that made me a little sad."
With the thoughts of something bigger brewing and wanting to do “something else”, these ideas needed to be put on hold while she was dealing with obstacles life was throwing at her. "I was married really young, and I was trying to conform to the old school Italian idea of being a wife. On paper it made sense. But it never really made sense. You have what you think you want it to be like, and then you have what you actually feel when you're in it." Simultaneously dealing with the end of her marriage and an unfulfilling career she was at a huge turning point of what’s next? "I basically fell on my face. When I was going through it, it was the hardest thing in the world. You do what you're supposed to do..get married, buy a house and it's not what you thought. I grew up seeing my parents so happy together and it's so important to have a partner that's cool with you changing. It's important to have someone that encourages you to grow…it just didn’t work out. The timing was around the time I decided to open this place. I poured myself into here. People tell you your 20s are hard, but your 30s are hard. It’s still getting harder. I think your 20s you care a little more, 30s I’m now just like whatever."
“After the breakup, I realized I could do anything, and I had all this time to think about my business. It's funny cause when I opened the business, my grandfather was like ‘How are you going to get married and have children if you have this business?' I’m like I don't know, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.. and now this is my child.”
Cafe Belle, her baby, is Noelle's mini-me. "I’m pulling all my backgrounds together here. I had the playlist for the place picked out before I had a location". Fusing together a childhood in that NJ bakery and her PR background, as well as her grandmother’s personal style and decor, she did it all. "This place is an homage to disco, Bensonhurst, my grandmother's mumus [referencing the floral wallpaper], I went crazy with the marble, cause my grandmother's place had the marble." Noting that she didn’t have a P.R. agency behind her, she did all the branding and marketing herself. Finally, after being in business for almost two years everything just fell into place. "The first year I was here I was like shitting my pants, like how am I gonna do this?? the bills are coming in, barely making it by - I need to sell a lot of cookies. I’m right by a gym and selling cookies!!!" She points out the window shaking her head. "But then I had to put some thought into the coffee and how I was going to market to the block. I mean my coffee machine was more than my Fiat."
Even with success comes some shitty days…
“There are days I put a sign on the door where I’m like " be back in 5 minutes' and I will just sit behind the counter and have a cry. .... I cut her off... "I wouldn’t take you as someone who closes the door and needs a cry - you have such a chill personality."
She adjusts her ponytail - "Oh yeah I need a good cry once in a while.” - her employee laughs cosigning the statement. “You need to just let it out. On the inside, it’s not what you're seeing on the outside sometimes."
We touch upon what it’s like to be a woman in business, she tells me of the few occasions her dad will be in the shop and customers or delivery people will assume he is the owner. "We have an all-female staff here, we would hire a guy, we had a guy working here… But I’m not sure if it would throw off our vibe…we didn't really try to do it, it just happened. In this world [referencing food service] you're surrounded by men and I want to be a boss. I also want to be soft, if a woman is too strong she’s a bitch, but if I’m not strong enough that's a problem too. I’m the face of this place, so sometimes you have to walk a line. That's not a women thing - but I think just putting yourself out there, being comfortable, ‘hey this is mine’ and being very involved.”
Our cookie talk takes a turn and we start talking big Italian New Jersey weddings, getting married young and some of the things that come with that. The things that no after school special or Disney movie prepared either one of us for when it came to relationships. I talk to her about my own life, my personal interests in doing something more, maybe a business, and ask her for any advice she can give. "Rip off the band-aid and go for it. Don't be afraid. For me, I was so afraid of failing before I even opened. I was like what if people don't like it, there were so many what-ifs? I’d be embarrassed, I would feel like I would let my family down if I couldn't cut it, it was so crippling. The goal for me is to just be happy, and not what people are expecting me to be. You don't really know until you get there, and you don't know how you're going to feel leading up to it, am I going to have anxiety all the time about this? All these experiences that might not ever happen, am I going to spend all this time thinking about something that will never happen? Success is also scary - what if I need to be here 24/7, what am I going to be doing in 10 years? You need to be in the moment and appreciate the good things and all you're learning. Do not hold yourself back. What if people talk shit? What if no one likes it? Nothing is permanent. You can try something for two years, and if you don't like it move on to something else. We change and evolve if it doesn't make you happy down the road that's ok."
We are interrupted by a customer and I look around Noelle's shop like I'm seeing it for the first time. Knowing her background, the significance this café plays in her life, and the meaning behind that floral wallpaper... I start looking at it again with a different set of eyes. She hands her customer their order, thanks them and watches me taking it all in.
"I'm carrying on the family business on my own terms. This is my baby and it's brought so many good things to my life.”
