The Adventure: How the Artizen Cafe came about

Myself (Derek) and my wife (Shawna), have been wanting to open a cozy cafe for many years now. We each own our own businesses;  I own a Fitness Studio in Belleville, Ontario called Living Energy and she owns Inner Peace Spa and Wellness Studio here in our hometown of, Frankford, Ontario.  We love our businesses and our clients.  But we still wanted a cozy place people could come and just "get away from it all".  We wanted a comfortable, cottage-like atmosphere where people can just plain feel good. Nothing but positive energy flowing through the place.

And so was born.... The Artizen Cafe. 

The name didn't take long to come up with for us.  "Art" for our family love of all art forms (in particular music, visual art and photography), and "Zen" to go along with our other two business of mind-body health and well-being. 

We've both have been through business expansions, delays, uncertainty, and big changes. But I don't think anything could have prepared us for the adventure we embarked on almost 2-years ago now, to make our vision a reality.   It took a wild, and insane 12-months to make it come together, while still running two other businesses and of course, raising our two girls.

Only two things could possibly keep our vision alive with that amount of delay, stress and unknowns;  

1)  A vision of what our cozy cafe "will be"   

2)  One big time stubborn wife, who will accept nothing but making this dream happen! 

Our first day went off, amazingly.  Lots of people stopping in, everyone seem to really enjoy the atmosphere, the music
and what we offered.  The positive energy was exactly what this cafe is about, and it was in full force throughout opening day! 

11-months later the journey continues.  There has been wonderful reviews, we've met incredible people and have created our regulars as well.  As we approach our one year anniversary of our cozy cafe, we hope our visitors will continue to spread the word about the Artizen Cafe.  More events including music, photography, paint nights etc... will continue to pop up, so please keep your eye on our blog and Facebook pages!

On behalf of our Zen Tribe, we want to thank everyone for coming to visit us, be it one time or several.  We plan to keep the Artizen Cafe full of nothing but smiles and positive energy!