Near the fountains, under the falling leaves, Gio Almonte ’25, marketing, sits at a nondescript folding table. There’s no signage, so you have to approach and say hello to find out what’s going on. He’s not representing a club or a fraternity, and he doesn’t need you to sign a petition. Instead, he’s offering what we all need the most on early weekday mornings: coffee.
“My brand stands for giving people a chance in the day to just take a break,” Almonte said. “It’s about cracking a bottle, enjoying that one moment, and getting back to what you have to do.”
Celestino Coffee was born earlier this year when Lindsey Edith Byrd, Almonte’s girlfriend, a senior at The Ohio State University, shared her idea for a must-have product. She came up with “this great idea for a coffee that just has almond milk, oat milk, and stuff like that in it,” Almonte explains. “But in bottles.”
Almonte took her idea and ran with it. Using skills he learned in an entrepreneurship class, he analyzed the market, identified competitors, and surveyed people about the viability of the product. The result, he says, was an “MVP,” the prototype for his current offering.
The name of the business is his middle name, Celestino, which means “celestial” in Italian. Tuning in to that meaning helped him develop his current logo, a circular design featuring the Northern Lights, and he has plans to match all his flavors up with different planets.
“Almond Vanilla is going to go with Mars,” Almonte said. “I have Pumpkin Spice being Saturn, and I have Honey Oat being Venus. I’m kind of an astrology nerd as well. It’s a really weird way to do it, but I have concepts in my head. For some reason, almond is always red in my head, so I chose Mars because Mars is primarily a red planet. Originally, I wanted honey oat to be blue, but honey is yellow. Saturn is orange, and Pumpkin Spice is orange without a shadow of a doubt.”
Almonte is on track to beat his sales records from last month, but his ambition and enthusiasm drive him to work harder.
“It’s a battle of mental games where I’m constantly working on it, but I feel like there’s no progress being done,” he said. “Almost like when you’re in the gym every single day, you won’t see the progress until you look at a picture from the past.”
Fortunately, he has a dedicated team collaborating with him to help him take the company as far as it can go. Byrd continues to function as the company’s co-founder and creative director and is responsible for formulating and pricing new recipes. Another friend designed the Celestino Coffee website and manages digital marketing.
He also credits some of his success to working with his mentor, the owner of a Fortune 500 company.
“They help so much, and not just in succeeding, but in progressing forward mentally,” Almonte said. “I think the biggest issue with being an entrepreneur is the mental strength you need, the mental fortitude. Getting a mentor helps you work through those issues.”
Another key to his success is his ability to think and plan with the big picture in mind. Almonte currently operates from a 26-page document that details his plans for both the next three years and the next five years.
“Anytime I find myself, like, I don’t know what to do anymore, where do I go from here, I’d remind myself with those plans. A lot of things get lost in your head.”
Looking forward, Almonte hopes to grow the company by creating partnerships with local businesses and national chains. He also wants to develop an app that ranks small businesses and to get involved in real estate, specifically planned walkable communities.
For now, though, he will continue to sit at the table by the fountains, introducing people to the universe of Celestino Coffee one at a time.
“There are a lot of days where I wake up at seven AM, and I don’t want to do it,” Almonte said. “I don’t want to be at this table. But the first few customers are regulars, and they get me that energy because they talk to me a little bit so I can keep selling. So, it’s like a gear in motion.”