Meet Stevie Leszyk

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stevie Leszyk. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stevie, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

Sobriety is at the forefront of finding my purpose. During the pandemic, I was among the huge wave of people who were able to stop drinking alcohol, something that changed my life for the better. For me just like many others, kava was crucial in making that happen. There happened to be an affordable housing crisis where I was living at the time, so I was keen on moving to Louisville where, once I was settled in, I got to launching Cave Valley Kava as a pop-up kava bar partly as a way to make new friends out in my new community. My passion for kava made me want to become a kavatender and, since there were no kava bars in Louisville and I didn’t want to relocate again, that meant I had to start my own kava bar.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

In 2022, my startup Cave Valley Kava became Kentuckiana’s first kava bar. We went brick & mortar the next year and it’s been so exciting to bring a completely new business concept to the area and to grow such an awesome community around it, changing people’s lives for the better. Not only kava, other stuff on my menu such as kratom, delta-9, nootropic mushrooms, cacao, and yerba maté are all functional herbal/spore elixirs that are really fun to work with because they give you an experience completely different from the typical NA options you see at most bars these days. Some of my customers report to be using my kava to help alleviate their PTSD, schizophrenia, alcoholism, opioid abuse, insomnia, and anxiety symptoms so that makes me feel very happy to do what I love. Kava changed my life and I love my customers because we have a common plant ally that makes you cool, calm, and collected.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’d say some of the skillsets that were most impactful on my journey include natural apothecary work, barista work, and music work. My first ever kava sale came when I was working at a natural apothecary part-time during college, it gave me training in herbalism that had a huge impact on the menu here. Barista work, mainly at smoothie bars, and kitchen work during most of my 20’s gave me a skillset that translated seamlessly into the kava bar setting, allowing me to fine-tune some of my favorite coffee drink recipes for that part of my menu and also proficiently manage the back of house so I didn’t have to hire someone right away to do that for me. Working in showbiz for many years as a musician, audio engineer, stagehand, bouncer, and DIY venue owner in the past is what really put my kava bar on the map as one of the city’s most esteemed venues ever since going brick & mortar. I already had a huge network of useful connections in the music industry, along with the experience necessary to be able to give back to the music industry and help launch a lot of exciting careers for raw local and touring musicians alike which makes me extra happy that I took the huge risk to launch my business.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I recently started a fun collaboration with a local candy company, Earth Candy, who helped roll out our own line of kava chocolate bars that are now sold out. Next we are going to give kava gummies a try, so I’m very excited about getting those on the shelves here and hopefully in stores around the region too. I would love to one day ramp up distribution of my kava edibles even more so, then the next level I think would be partnering with someone who has a bottling/canning conveyor in order to have my own line of sparkling kava that can be mailed to anyone. My recipes are already developed, it can just be hard to turn a worthwhile profit when it comes to premium products like that. If anyone wants to collaborate, they are welcome to write me.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Portrait courtesy of Sylvia Ruiz
Other photos courtesy of Stevie Leszyk

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