BY SHIKHA DAS SHANKAR*
From the parking lot, Joy and Zest gives nothing away. It sits in a strip mall that has the same rotation of businesses you’d find in a hundred shopping centers across metro Atlanta: a taco spot, chiropractor’s office, a nail salon, a clinic, and a preschool. Looking at the exterior won’t tell you what’s inside. It would be easy to drive past it if not for a small green sign next to the clinic that says in white, “Coffee & Gift Shop, Joy & Zest.” There is something unique behind the door, and when you walk in, you see it and feel it.
To your left, the name Joy and Zest reappears, five times larger than the sign out front, stamped across the wall. Beneath it, a water fountain, a Buddha statue, potted plants, and a two-foot crystal flanked by smaller ones lend the space a serene, spa-like energy. Beyond that, the room opens into a large seating area anchored by a piano and guitars toward the back. You instantly feel the coziness of this space and want to grab a seat.
Not Just a Coffee Shop
To the right of the entrance, tables are layered with eclectic merchandise like a gift shop in a mall. A mix of jewelry displays, boho cushions with block prints, essential oils, and crystals of all varieties fill those tables. This part of the café is a curated retail space that Pooja Gupta, owner of Joy and Zest, had planned for since day one. She wanted a coffee and gift shop to go hand in hand since she first thought of starting a cafe.
“It was always a plan,” Pooja says when asked when she decided to sell merchandise alongside coffee.
Most cafes stock a few branded mugs or a tin of loose-leaf tea near the register. Joy and Zest runs a mini boutique that happens to also serve lattes: bracelets, home goods, trinkets, salt lamps, crystal clusters and trees, bottled healing oils from a vendor she trusts, and candles she makes herself and sells out of as soon as she restocks them. “I’m a decorator. I love decorating things. I love stones,” she says. “I feel those are healing type of things.”
It’s an unusual pairing, and Pooja knows it draws a second look. People come in expecting a coffee order and leave with something else entirely. Things they weren’t planning on purchasing for themselves or a loved one. One regular, a man who lingered at the shop for a while on a recent visit, ended up leaving with a gift for his wife rather than just a drink for himself, exactly the kind of detour Pooja seems to be counting on. Among her 107 five-star Google reviews, one customer echoed that sentiment: they’d come in for a coffee and left surprised to have found what they called a hidden gem of a shop.
People Over Region
Underneath the creativity of bringing to life a unique café, the reason for starting it at all was simple. “I wanted to do something. I wanted to show that I’m capable of doing it.” She felt that years of being a wife, a mother, an employee, and moving repeatedly for her husband’s job had erased her own sense of who she is. Joy and Zest became the place she rebuilt that sense of self. “I wanted to be an example for my kids, that mom can do it too.”
Her heart was set on a coffee shop that wasn’t defined by any one culture or community. It was a deliberate attempt to let anyone walk through the door and find peace and good coffee. “I want everybody to enjoy and feel welcome,” Pooja says. “I don’t want it to just be an Indian place or just be like it’s only for one community. I want to bring everybody together. That’s the purpose of this. Even outside, it’s written: bring everyone together.”
It’s a striking choice in a stretch of metro Atlanta that has seen a wave of new South Asian-owned cafes lean on a specific and recognizable flavor of home like authentic chai, filter kaapi, and paratha. Pooja looked at that same landscape and took the road nobody else had.
Starting out in the food and beverage industry was a challenge she had anticipated but not fully understood till she was in the middle of it. She taught herself the technique of making coffee along with the help of her son, designed the interiors herself, and pushed through expensive licensing delays. “This was a hard journey,” she says. “I have helped other people start their businesses before, but when you start your own, you have to do every single thing by yourself.”
“My goal was that whoever steps in should feel relaxed and feel at home — and whoever comes to my coffee shop tells me they get that ‘wow’ feeling… so relaxed, homely, and decorated in every corner. And I believe that as a decorator, I achieved exactly what I dreamed of,” says Pooja.
Tribe of Supporters
Even if Pooja built most of it with her own two hands, she’s quick to credit the people who got her here: her family, husband, and two kids, who stood behind her through every step, and a circle of friends and professionals who helped guide her through permits and approvals for a project. “I can’t thank them enough,” she says. Among them, she points to a construction company whose owners are consulting engineers for her cafe, people who typically take on much bigger projects and didn’t even know her, but who still made time for her. “Their guidance with approvals and their expertise made a real difference,” she says.
Having done that hard and expensive work of figuring it out alone, Pooja is now the person other women call when they’re trying to do the same. “I know now I have all the knowledge, I feel, and I can help more people,” she says. It’s become its own kind of giving back, passing along the guidance she once had to piece together herself.
She’s partnering with Raksha, the metro Atlanta nonprofit, to host events at the cafe at a discounted rate, one of several ways she’s looking to make Joy and Zest useful to more than just customers ordering coffee. Providing the space, she says, is her way of giving back to the community that’s shown up for her.
Spreading Joy
Metro Atlanta’s cafe scene has been growing fast, and not just with Indian chai cafe concepts. Korean coffee shops, chai cafes, specialty roasters, and many other new names are springing up in this corridor every few months, all competing for the same broad slice of people who just want a good drink and welcoming vibes. Pooja is aware of this competition but doesn’t dwell much on it. “If you worry about it, you will not be able to do anything,” she says. “If people like you, they will come to you.”
It’s an answer other café owners NRI Pulse has spoken with might give almost word for word, but it’s the conviction behind it that makes it stick. Like many women stepping into business for the first time, Pooja wants to spread a little joy to whoever walks in and let the rest fall into place.
Joy & Zest | Coffee, Pastries & Gift Shop in Norcross, GA
2055 Beaver Ruin Rd Ste K, Norcross, GA 30071
(678) 362-3223
Instagram
