The music is on before a guest orders coffee. It follows them through lunch and, if they stay long enough, into happy hour. At Colada Shop, those shifts in sound help a space feel right at every point in the day.
For founder and CEO Daniella Senior, music is as much a part of the Cuban café’s identity as its food, cocktails and colorful spaces. When the music is wrong, she can feel the change in the room, especially in the morning, before guests have had their coffee.
“If the music is off or wrong, the vibe just feels completely off,” Senior told Shawn Walchef on Digital Hospitality.
Across seven locations in the Washington, D.C., area, Colada Shop uses Soundtrack to curate music with its team and adjust the atmosphere to each location and time of day. The goal is to make people feel welcome enough to stay and come back.
A Café Built for the Whole Day
Colada Shop was originally supposed to be a small café above a planned speakeasy on 14th Street. It would serve coffee, Cuban sandwiches, croquettes and a few cocktails while Senior and her team developed the bar downstairs.
When the café opened in 2016, lines stretched out of its roughly 300-square-foot space. The response changed the plan.
“Clearly we hit something,” Senior said. “Clearly people were wanting what I was missing so much as well.”
She wanted Colada Shop to be an extension of guests’ homes, a place that could change with them over the course of a day. Someone might stop in for coffee, return for lunch or stay for cocktails. The concept grew around coffee, cooking, cocktails and what Senior calls “Cubanism”: the welcome, colors, sounds and feeling of the space. Community later became a fifth pillar.
That range has helped Colada Shop work in an airport, too. Senior was cautious about licensing the brand because a poor guest experience there would still reflect on Colada Shop. She chose a smaller operating partner, Baldy Management, and kept her team involved in decisions about vendors, products and the brand.
Senior said the airport shop has brought the brand in front of thousands of travelers each day and is now the airport’s second-busiest restaurant, behind Chick-fil-A. Its all-day menu fits the setting without forcing Colada Shop to become a different concept.
“We’re not faking any day parts,” she said. “We do the coffee, we do the breakfast, the food, the lunch, the happy hour.”
Letting the Music Change With the Room
Senior sees music as one of the clearest ways to guide how guests feel. A lively song can get people moving when they walk in. A poor fit can make the room feel tense. Sound, lighting and color work together, but music is often the first detail she notices.
“Music is an art form,” Senior said. “Same as your food, same as coffee, same as cocktails. It’s part of culture. It’s part of expression.”
Colada Shop’s soundtrack cannot be identical everywhere, all day. Some locations draw a younger crowd. Others have more people working in the morning and need a quieter tone. Each shop also changes as guests move from coffee and breakfast to lunch and cocktails.
Soundtrack gives Colada Shop the flexibility to curate its own playlists around those differences. Senior values having her team choose the music rather than relying on someone outside the restaurant to decide what each space should sound like.
Chefs, baristas and café associates suggest songs and speak up when something has been played too often. A few chefs are especially involved in the selections; one is a DJ. The playlists have become a way for employees to put part of themselves into the guest experience.
“It’s become part of our culture, our internal culture, but also part of our culture, obviously, for our guests,” Senior said.
That energy extends beyond a regular service day. Colada Shop has hosted morning run clubs that end with a coffee party at 10 a.m. Music helps turn the gathering into an experience that feels true to the brand, even without cocktails.
Showing the Feeling Online
Colada Shop also uses music in its social posts. Walchef pointed out that the songs paired with its videos give viewers a sense of what it might be like to walk into one of the shops.
Senior said the challenge is showing the full experience in a short piece of content. Colada Shop serves coffee, food and cocktails, but guests also come for the people and the feeling of being there. The team is moving toward rawer storytelling that shows more of its day-to-day life.
“Most of the time it’s like, that place is cool,” she said of what catches her attention when looking at restaurants online. “That place looks like a place that, in a very busy schedule, I want to take time out of my day and go and hang out.”
The same thinking guides the in-person experience. Senior describes Cuban hospitality as treating each person who walks through the door like a favorite guest you have not seen in five years. That means learning names, remembering orders and noticing when a regular needs their coffee quickly. At one neighborhood location, employees know the dogs’ names, too.
Those relationships show up in reviews, where guests mention employees by name. For Senior, that is evidence of a real conversation, not just a transaction.
As Colada Shop considers growth beyond its current market, she wants to protect that feeling. She hopes to build a national brand, but said the many details that make each shop special are why she does not currently see franchising as the path forward.
Music is one of those details. Chosen by the people who know the shops and adjusted to the guests in each room, it helps Colada Shop offer something people cannot get from making a good coffee at home: a place where they want to spend part of their day.
