But the problem was her job. Sara works full-time from home, which means the usual ways of meeting people, say, through a canteen, perhaps a commute or a colleague who says, ‘we should grab lunch ’, weren’t on the table. “Working from home made it much harder to meet people and form meaningful connections organically,” Sara shares with Voicey.

So, last year, Sara did something slightly unhinged, and well, out of her comfort zone. She began inviting strangers to her apartment for coffee.

Girls, I get it, it sounds hella risky in the kind of era we live in, but Sara believes in doing a “good deed for herself” before she starts her day. Every morning, Sara makes coffee on her balcony. “There really is something about the whole process of measuring your beans, grinding them to that perfect fine texture, and then making that cup of coffee and hoping your latte art will come out right.”

This ritual led to what her monthly, daytime supper club is called Cuppa Jo. Coffee. Sara says, “Coffee has always felt like more than just a beverage. It’s a reason to slow down, sit with someone or with yourself and make time for a conversation.” She wanted to build something around her love for coffee and share it with everyone.

Five years from now, Sara’s only hope for Cuppa Jo is that people make friendships, memories, and stories they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

But Cuppa Jo didn’t start as a mission to find friends. In fact, Sara loves cooking, baking and hosting too. And the people around her had been asking for years when she’d finally open a cafe.

“That is very much my retirement goal,” she says. For her, this monthly supper club is a way of “meeting her goal halfway without having to take that leap of faith just yet.”

There was also, in her words, a slightly selfish reason. “I just thought it would be nice to have more people in my life.”

Because the reality is, making friends as an adult feels like a chore, and Sara can’t pretend to be friends with anyone to save her life. As kids, you make friends because you share a classroom or a park. After that, everything gets deliberate. “We have work, routines, responsibilities, and less time to just exist around other people.” In a new city, you can be surrounded by people every day and still have nobody to call for a spontaneous coffee. And someone has to go first; Cuppa Jo is her way of making that first step easier. “You don’t have to show up knowing anyone. You just have to be open to meeting someone.”

Matcha served at Sara’s apartment

Here, everyone already has something to talk about, because they like coffee or they’re curious about it. And then, of course, there’s the setting. “There’s something about a smaller gathering in a drawing room on a couch that makes it easier to let your guard down. It feels less like networking and more like being invited into someone’s home.” It’s also why she calls it a daytime supper club and not an apartment cafe. Supper clubs are about the table more than the food, but they usually happen at night. She wanted that feeling in the afternoon, with coffee as the centrepiece. “An apartment cafe sounds like you’re just coming over to buy a drink. Cuppa Jo is about the whole experience.”

So, in all, Cuppa Jo has no strict playbook, but it does have one rule: no talking about work. And well, to be honest, in an age when all of us base our entire identities on what we do for a living, this experience is an undoing itself because her reasoning is hard to argue with.

After all, “‘What do you do?’ is usually one of the first questions we ask. And suddenly you’re describing your job title instead of who you really are.”

She’s no conversation police; all Sara wants is to give people the permission to exist outside their professional identity for a few hours.

Sara loves cooking, baking, and hosting too, and the people around her had been asking for years when she’d finally open a cafe

Sara remembers her first pop-up “so vividly”, mostly because it was chaos. Her family was visiting, they were dealing with a medical situation, and everything that could go wrong…did go wrong. She came very close to cancelling. “I was just spiralling in the kitchen,” she says. Thoughts and questions running through her mind: “Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe it was the wrong decision.”

Then she listened. Through the kitchen door, all she could hear was people laughing and chatting and having a really good afternoon. “Every time I heard that, it just meant everything, and I kept going.”

The first time around, ten people turned up, of whom three or four were acquaintances, plus a few strangers, including her cousin’s college friends, whom she’d never met.

The room does the rest because there is music in the background and dogs are welcome!

Ten was a crowd she felt comfortable with. “Sometimes what feels like a complete disaster behind the scenes can still be something really special for the people experiencing it.”

And the ten people who turned up were curated because “Cuppa Jo isn’t an open-door cafe where anyone can walk in,” says Sara. People sign up, and she curates the guest list for each edition. The address goes only to confirmed guests, because it’s a residential property. “I want to respect everyone’s privacy, including my own.”

The sign-up is a registration form where she asks what drew you to the experience, what you’re interested in, a couple of personality-based questions, and what you’d love to get out of spending an afternoon with a group of strangers.

And what she’s reading for might surprise you. She shares, “Your answer does not have to be the most impressive. I’m just more interested in people who seem curious and open to the experience.” And she isn’t picking individuals so much as building a table. “It’s less about selecting the right type of people, and more about being thoughtful of the group she is bringing together.”

With gatherings this small, she thinks about the intellectual mix in the room, and how to manage the room while giving new connections a chance. If you miss out, you’re not binned because Sara keeps your details and reaches out when a later edition might suit you better.

Once you’re in, nobody’s going to make you perform. “Some people are naturally outgoing, while others take a little longer to warm up. You shouldn’t have to be the loudest person in the room to feel like you belong there.” She’s honest about what she’s asking of her guests, too. “It takes a little bit of courage and consideration for strangers to choose to spend their afternoon going to another stranger’s house to meet a room full of strangers. So, yeah, I think it is a balancing act for sure.”

The coffee menu at the day supper club

And she makes sure she doesn’t leave the conversation to chance, either. Before the activities start, there’s an ice-breaker with cue cards and prompts.

One of her favourites: “What’s your most recent recollection of happiness?” It’s a quick way to find out who you click with.

“You just might discover that you have nothing in common professionally, but you share a very specific, very random interest.”

The room does the rest because there is music in the background and dogs are welcome, and there are games, including tournament-style editions where her sister built a custom order management system and a live leaderboard. “A game gives you something to do with your hands, music gives you something to talk about, and a dog will happily interrupt any awkward silence without asking for anyone’s permission.”

I really think a lot of these well-thought-out bits come from the fact that Sara is an introverted extrovert. She is my junior from school, and even when we both used to hang out, I remember how she took her own sweet time to open up to me.

And I think that’s why she gets it and believes that nobody has to be the most interesting person in the room. “You can just play a game, sing along to a song, or get invested in a ridiculous leaderboard. And somewhere along the way, you just stop feeling like a stranger.”

The hard part, however, is doing all this alongside a full-time corporate job. Menu testing, sourcing, prepping from scratch, setting up the space, registrations, outreach, packaging, vendors, and “being your own social media agency” are all a part of the one-woman army.

Because it’s a passion project, she does most of it herself, though her sister and close friends pitch in, serving, thinking up games and giving feedback.

What keeps Sara going isn’t the numbers, though they’re quietly impressive: around 18 editions serving over 250 cups of coffee and matcha.

Some guests even travel in from outside the city just for an edition. It’s the smaller things. “Hearing that people had a lovely time, seeing guests return, or finding out that people who met at one of our editions have stayed in touch.”

It’s like she went looking out for friends and now has built her own li’l community. And now that Sara has one with more than 500 people across Instagram and WhatsApp, what does she really want now that her goal is fulfilled?

She doesn’t reach for anything grand; all she wants is a “sense of belonging without having to earn it. Somewhere we can show up as we are without needing to be particularly interesting, successful, or entertaining.”

Which explains a lot. That is why the form doesn’t want your most impressive answer, why nobody has to be the loudest in the room, and why job titles stay outside. The whole thing is built around a place “where you can be quiet without it being awkward, and where you feel like someone would notice if you weren’t around.”

Most of us have people, she says, but “we’re still looking for spaces where we feel connected. For me, community is about creating more opportunities for those connections to happen.”

Her advice to anyone tempted to copy her is refreshingly unglamorous. “You don’t need to have everything figured out before you begin. Start with what you have, invite a few people in, and see what happens.”

Five years from now, Sara’s only hope for Cuppa Jo is that people make friendships, memories, and stories they wouldn’t have had otherwise. “Maybe someone met their closest friend here, or simply had a Saturday that felt a little less lonely.”

The post The Bengaluru Living Room Where Strangers Show Up for Coffee and Aren’t Allowed To Talk About Work appeared first on Voicey World.