5 years in the past, Miami Seashore entrepreneur Kathia Joseph was on the verge of closing her first restaurant. With certainly one of her goals hanging within the stability, she refused. As a substitute, she pivoted by turning the enterprise right into a hookah lounge, a choice that ended up being worthwhile.
“I’m the kind of individual that by no means offers up,” mentioned Joseph, 40. “I mentioned that I’m not going to shut.”
Joseph’s knack for betting on herself is what led her to open Casa Matilda, a Miami Seashore steakhouse, in early 2024. In her first 12 months of working the enterprise, the Washington Avenue restaurant has welcomed celebrities starting from rapper 50 Cent to actor Cuba Gooding Jr. and a number of solid members of the “Actual Housewives of Miami” and obtained a Diners’ Selection designation from OpenTable. As many South Seashore “clubstaurants” deal with maintaining with tendencies, Casa Matilda is working to outline itself by its contemporary delicacies and detail-oriented service.
However the path to changing into a restaurateur wasn’t a straight line for Joseph, a local of Haiti who labored for greater than a decade as a translator within the movie and TV business in France. She was 17 when she moved from her house in Cap-Haïtien to reside with family in France in 2003.
Joseph excelled in her new French college and, as a result of she had grown up talking and writing French and likewise spoke English nicely, certainly one of her lecturers quickly related her with somebody they knew within the movie enterprise. Joseph took a take a look at that ended up being an audition for Dubbing Brothers, a French studio that creates translations of main movie and TV productions.
As Joseph turned extra profitable at writing translations, she started planning for her objective of engaged on Disney reveals. A supervisor defined that she wanted a minimal of three years of expertise, however when one other coworker didn’t present up for work at some point, she took the chance to point out her abilities.
“It was for ‘Hannah Montana’ with Miley Cyrus,” she mentioned. “I begin, and so they love what I did. [I was] doing ‘Hannah Montana,’ ‘The Suite Lifetime of Zack and Cody’ and ‘Wizards of Waverly Place.‘”
Nonetheless simply a youngster, Joseph went to highschool throughout the day and after 5 p.m. made about $260 per episode that she translated. She ultimately received so quick that she translated as much as three episodes a day.
By 2010, Joseph had made immense progress along with her translation work and was accountable for coaching new writers. She had her daughter Joyce and started questioning how she might be a screenwriter of her personal unique movies in English.
When Joseph’s father Octavil died in Haiti in 2013, she thought of what objectives mattered most to her as she mourned his demise. A mentor instructed that immersion would assist her develop into a greater English screenwriter and that she ought to reside in Miami for a couple of months. A 12 months later, Miami was her new house.
However the transfer ended up altering the course of her skilled journey otherwise. In 2015, Joseph was strolling via Miami Seashore when she realized that she want to make investments in the neighborhood and personal a enterprise. She had all the time cherished cooking and frequented Paul, a restaurant on Lincoln Highway.
Spend your days with Hayes
Subscribe to our free Stephinitely publication
Columnist Stephanie Hayes will share ideas, emotions and humorous enterprise with you each Monday.
You’re all signed up!
Need extra of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get began.
With an everlasting curiosity about opening a restaurant, Joseph started studying all the pieces she might by way of YouTube movies and Google searches.
“In France, you want a level for all the pieces,” she mentioned. “I assumed you needed to have a level to do a restaurant.”
On a telephone name with a good friend in Switzerland, Joseph talked about her restaurant thought and was pleasantly stunned when her good friend provided to assist her with an funding of over $300,000.
The owner for the constructing Joseph lived in instructed her {that a} storefront on the primary stage was out there. She signed a lease in July of 2019 and started bringing her first restaurant to life.
On Nov. 30, 2019, Blue Paris Bistro lastly opened. Simply three months later, her entrepreneurial goals met a sobering actuality: the COVID-19 pandemic.
She needed to pivot quick and adjusted her eatery right into a hookah lounge.
“That’s the most effective resolution I [ever] made,” she mentioned. “Oh my God, I began making good cash.”
Nevertheless, her change in fortune didn’t go unnoticed by her landlord. Following the growth in enterprise at her hookah lounge, hire went as much as $25,000 a month for the 1,500-square-foot area in 2021 from the $15,000 that she’d paid earlier than.
After closing the hookah lounge in June 2021, Joseph opened the Cuban restaurant Matilda’s Kitchen that September on Collins Avenue. She nonetheless owns and operates the restaurant in the present day.
In September 2023, Joseph and her enterprise companion bought Casa Matilda, an current restaurant in South Seashore, after six months of negotiations. She mentioned she remembered when the constructing was constructed and had all the time pictured proudly owning a restaurant within the area.
Whereas the idea was not initially her personal, Joseph stored the Casa Matilda title, up to date the decor and took time curating the menu, which options Mexican-inspired dishes with a twist, like Oaxaca crab enchiladas and duck carnitas tacos, in addition to steakhouse fare like bone-in ribeye and a dry-aged porterhouse.
Joseph is conscious of the assist Black prospects have given her companies and appreciates it that rather more as a Black lady in a neighborhood of entrepreneurs that don’t usually appear to be her.
“The Black neighborhood is de facto serving to its personal individuals as a result of after I turned [Blue Paris] right into a hookah lounge, 70% of my prospects have been Black, and so they actually pushed my enterprise loads,” she mentioned. “Even right here at Casa Matilda, I’ve a whole lot of prospects as a result of they know me from Blue Paris.”
With 5 years of enterprise classes underneath her belt, Joseph is contemplating increasing her restaurant portfolio and mentioned she has extra potential traders reaching out than ever earlier than. She has additionally just lately gotten into consulting, saying that serving to others navigate the ups and downs that include restaurant life is simply as necessary to her.
“I wish to assist Black individuals, girls and different minorities as a marketing consultant,” she mentioned. “[This work] is de facto difficult, and other people generally give out false data.”
Regardless of the challenges Joseph has endured working a number of companies, she mentioned doing what she loves makes all of it price it.
“[With a] restaurant, you must find it irresistible,” she mentioned. “It’s all about love as a result of it’s a troublesome enterprise.”
