Kind Cafe Named Emerging Retailer Of The Year

Fairhope’s Kind Cafe and owner Alex Pikul have been named Alabama’s 2024 Gee Emerging Retailer of the Year by the Alabama Retail Association. The café has been open since November 2021, serving items such as New York-style bagels and coffees like Nitro Cold Brew. Kind Cafe “has quarterly service activities with local nonprofits to raise awareness and funds to support the nonprofits,” donating 3% of total sales to local nonprofits in 2023. Sales were up nearly 28% year over year (2023 over 2022) and appear to be on pace for 17% growth in 2024 as well,” the judges noted of the café’s past year performance. In his entry, Pikul emphasized another sales metric: the restaurant’s “average check grew to $14.76 [in 2023] from $12.53 in 2022. So far, in 2024, our average check is up to $17.22… while not increasing our prices.”