Exploring Life & Business with Jonathan Pascual of Opo Coffee

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Pascual.

Hi Jonathan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m from Atlanta, born and raised. I’ve spent my entire career in coffee, starting with my first barista job at the Starbucks in downtown Decatur. I had the privilege of moving on to open up and manage various coffee shops in the Atlanta area (including Chattahoochee Coffee and Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee) before becoming a coffee shop owner/operator myself, with Taproom Coffee & Beer in Kirkwood (which I recently sold in 2025).

I’ve worked as a business coach and consultant for years, really focusing on mission- and value-driven companies, and I felt led to found Opo Coffee as a culmination of years of specialty coffee experience and lessons learned in the missional business community.

Personally, I’m married to Sarah, who is on staff at Resonate Church in Decatur, I have four kids ranging in age from 13-17, and we live in Stone Mountain, in Dekalb County.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It most certainly has not been a smooth road. Opo Coffee is different from my previous experiences with smaller owner-operated neighborhood coffee shops. Opo has more areas of operation, larger staff, higher expenses, and a public commitment to values that requires more resources and effort to maintain.

Like most small businesses, a lot of our difficulties have been financial – no matter how many times I’ve been a part of business launches, it seems like the “reasonable” startup budget tends to always fall short. For Opo, even though we were busy from day one, it’s taken several years to grow to a more sustainable pace to adequately cover our employee wages (we are a Certified Living Wage Employer) and hold to our charitable giving commitments (as a member company of 1% For the Planet).

We’ve also learned just how difficult it is to grow and mature a team when you start from scratch. It takes intentionality and consistency to invest in employees long-term, to grow them into leadership positions or find their sweet spots. While some have moved on from employment at Opo, many have stayed and thrived. We’re proud of how we’ve taken care of our staff and we’ve learned how to better lean on every team member for our collective success.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Opo Coffee is a specialty coffee company with a retail coffee bar and roastery located in Decatur, GA. Our mission is “to use specialty coffee to make a positive impact in people’s lives throughout the world.” Our core values are Respect, Positivity, and Honor – those values are encapsulated in the name “Opo”, which is a Filipino word for a respectful “yes”.

We serve the community coffee through in-person retail, wholesale coffee supply to businesses, and shipping coffee nationwide through our e-commerce store.

One of the most unique aspects of Opo Coffee is our Training Lab, a dedicated classroom space in our facility, outfitted with espresso machines, brewing equipment, tools, and resources to equip people to learn about coffee. We are one of the most active coffee training centers in the Southeast, and we’re the only coffee training center in Georgia that partners with the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) to administer professional certificate courses for people working in specialty coffee. We have three Authorized SCA Trainers on staff that lead more than 25 classes a month, teaching professional baristas and home coffee enthusiasts alike.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
My life has been shaped by my tight-knit family, my Filipino cultural identity, my upbringing in the diverse city of Clarkston, and my strong Christian faith and church community. As a kid I was always active and outgoing, involved in sports and clubs, and always striving to excel in anything I was involved in. I am grateful that my childhood took place in a pre-internet and pre-social media world, and I’m certain that has kept me grounded throughout my life.

Being asked about “growing up” gives obvious answers about childhood, but I would say that most of my deeper identity formation, personality, interests, and maturity has only truly come in recent years… I’m still “growing up” and enjoying who I am becoming with each passing year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.opocoffee.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/opocoffee
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/opocoffee

Image Credits
Cristina Elena