Headshot of Jordan Pandy

As a real estate agent, making money off Airbnbs was a safe bet. I decided to franchise my favorite coffee shop instead.

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jordan Hooten, 34, a Florida real estate agent who franchised a coffee shop in St. Petersburg, Florida, to diversify his income. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Real estate has been good to me. I got my real estate license about 11 years ago, when I was 23, but I’ve been practicing full-time for seven years.

Single-family residential has always been my bread and butter; helping people find their first house, helping somebody sell their first house, and helping them find their second house.

Over the last four years, I’ve started doing a lot of multifamily and commercial properties as well.

I’ve seen a couple of different cycles of the market — my parents were flipping houses back in the early 2000s, so I’ve been following real estate since I was a teenager.

When I first came in around 2018, it was a stable market, not too dissimilar to the market that we’re in right now, but inventory would sit for a little while.

Then and now, we went through the 2.5% interest rate market, which was a lot of fun. Back then, if you signed a listing agreement, you could already count the money. You could pretty much say, “I’m getting that money in the next 45 days.”


A garage door opening into a coffee shop.

Southern Grounds’ St. Petersburg, Florida, location. 

Southern Grounds



Now, it’s like you can have eight listings worth of a total of $5 million in volume and say, “I really don’t know how this is going to go. I think I’ll get most of this, but it’s not as much of a sure thing.”

The drastic change was very tough on a lot of people in my industry when it went from the 2022 rates to the 2023 rates overnight.

I used to work out of this coffee shop, so I decided to invest in it myself

When the market was going well, previously I’d diversify by buying Airbnbs.

I’ve had a part in four Airbnbs at one time or another. Sometimes you sell them because it’s just a good time, but that business, it’s like you put up $70,000 in your savings, and you’re happy to be getting a return of maybe $800 a month.

Every now and then, there’s a problem where you have to come up with $2,000 to $5,000 out of pocket. I thought this was a pretty good idea for investment if you’re 55 years old — just keep stacking these and say, “All right, well that one will pay for my health insurance, and that one will pay for my car insurance, and that’s great.”

But I was like, I’m 30 years old, why don’t I take a stab at investing in something that could make me the same amount as real estate does? And once it’s stabilized, it will not take up all my time?

I could invest $70,000 and make $800 a month, but what if I could invest double that and potentially make $12,000 or $13,000 a month?

It’s a good time in life for me to take that chance.


A colorful mural inside a coffee shop.

Hooten was able to make the investment due to his success as an agent. 

Southern Grounds



I was doing so well in real estate that I was confident enough to invest over six figures in a coffee business. But it wasn’t just coffee; it was specifically Southern Grounds.

When I didn’t have an office, I used to go up to Southern Grounds in Jacksonville all the time. It was a place where I could sit on my laptop and order coffee, and didn’t feel pressured to order food until I was ready to order food. If I wanted to stay and work on my laptop and make phone calls for four hours, I could.

I reached out to the founder on Facebook and said, “Man, I want to franchise your store. It’s my favorite place in the world to go,” and that’s how all this started.

I started this process in 2022. We’ve been working on building this store for three and a half years from when we signed the Franchise Disclosure Document to when we actually opened our store in August 2025.

There’s no way we could have afforded to buy our building — it actually wouldn’t even pencil if you look at it as a real estate deal. Our rent of $13,500 is probably half of what the mortgage would be if we bought it. Downtown St. Petersburg is very overpriced.


Downtown St. Petersburg, Florida.

St. Petersburg, Florida. 

RudyBalasko/Getty Images



I had to build the entire restaurant from looking like a garage into a restaurant. The construction alone was about $800,000. That’s just to build out the interior of the building that we are renting — I mean, silverware for a restaurant is $25,000.

I think that in the real estate industry, your first year is not usually a good indicator of how you’re going to do financially, just like the restaurant business. During my first year in real estate, I didn’t do that well. So I would say I’m happier with the year one restaurant success than year one real estate success, for sure.

I’m glad I took a risk and diversified my income

I bartended in college, so I’ve always been on the hospitality side of business, and I guess you could say real estate is hospitality: It’s being a people person, enjoying talking to people, enjoying hearing their stories and where different people are from and what they’re doing and what they’ve got going on the rest of the weekend — just caring.

My transaction volume is still the same since before I bought the coffee shop. My real estate business has taken a slight hit because it hasn’t continued to grow in the way that I think it may have grown had I not taken on any other endeavors. But ultimately, I’m not losing clients.

Buying the coffee shop really has not changed my day-to-day; it has just required more time management and multitasking. I wake up earlier and work later. I’m working my ass off.

I think it’s a good idea for real estate agents to diversify their income. It really just depends on each person’s financial situation.

Sometimes I wonder, “Did I make the right decision?”

I think I did because I enjoy this.




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Aditi Bharade

Gen Zers date for financial stability, says Coffee Meets Bagel’s CEO

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Adios to casual dating: Young Americans are seeking committed life partners to split bills with.

Quincy Yang, the co-CEO of dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, told Business Insider that money and economics are huge considerations for Gen Z when choosing a partner.

“It’s so hard to afford to buy a house, or any property,” Yang said, adding that a lot of younger people are staying at home with their parents. He said for older generations, it was more affordable to “live the American dream” of buying a home and starting a family.

“Now, you need dual incomes to afford just the median condo or house. You need to have a pretty good job; you can’t slack off too much,” he said.

Yang said the affordability crisis has affected dating. “There’s an incentive now to find a good partner who is financially stable and ambitious.”

Shn Juay, Yang’s co-CEO, said that this is evident in Gen Zers not being as into hookups as older generations.

“When you talk about dating apps, the first thing that comes to mind will be hookups,” she said. “But the Gen Zs are really more conscious about more real things in their life, they’re not into hookups. Unlike the previous generation, what they imagine of an ideal partner is very pragmatic.”

The CEOs said that daters should choose dealbreakers judiciously while finding a partner.

“You can always go for a higher degree, or you get promoted along the way, but not at age 28 years old, where everybody’s probably still really early in their career,” Juay told Business Insider.

Dual incomes are needed to achieve the American dream

Living in the US is more expensive than ever.

Housing costs have been rising faster than incomes over the last two decades, according to a June 2024 report by the US Treasury Department.

Grocery prices are not providing any relief. US food prices rose nearly 25% from 2020 to 2024, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture.

The Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on foreign goods this year has exacerbated this problem by forcing retailers like Walmart and Target to raise prices.

In this climate, living alone has become an unaffordable luxury for many Americans.

A Pew Research Center study released in January said more US adults are living with a partner. The study analyzed US Census Bureau data and found that the percentage of adults living without a partner decreased from 44% in 2019 to 42% in 2023.

Life costs more, so money is a priority for younger daters

So naturally, finances are a big priority for daters.

In November, the dating app, which has around 20 million users worldwide, conducted a survey of about 1,050 of its users in the US between the ages of 21 and 35. The respondents were working professionals who said they were either actively seeking a relationship or open to one.

The survey revealed that financial stability was a top priority for them, with 54% of the respondents listing it as such. Almost 60% labeled “ambition/drive” as a must-have in a potential partner, even more than having shared interests.

“While many are looking for someone to spend their life with, practical matters still reign supreme,” said Coffee Meets Bagel, which markets its app as “for serious daters.”




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Aditi Bharade

Brian Niccol said he wants Starbucks to feel like the coffee shop from ‘Friends’

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Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol wants his cafés to feel like Central Perk from the TV show ‘Friends.’

During an interview with The Wall Street Journal, released Monday, Niccol spoke about his “Back to Starbucks” plan, a yearlong process of turning around the brand after several quarters of declining sales amid a deteriorating customer experience.

He told Alan Murray, president of The WSJ Leadership Institute, that the name “Back to Starbucks” helped to give his baristas a “visual understanding” of the café experience he was trying to achieve.

“Because everybody remembers a ‘Friends’ episode, or that coffee house experience, by me saying ‘Back to Starbucks,’ that kind of hearkens that memory of what I would call the barista-customer connection that we’re after,” Niccol said.

The coffee shop from the ‘Friends,’ Central Perk, was a pivotal set piece throughout the sitcom’s 10-season run. Almost every episode featured the café as the characters’ favorite haunt.

The cast was often filmed sitting on Central Perk’s mismatched sofas and chairs, ordering coffee and baked goods, and making small talk with the awkward manager, Gunther.

Niccol’s comparison of Central Perk to Starbucks comes after he spent more than a year rebranding Starbucks, from what customers and employees said was a soulless conglomerate chain, to a warm and inviting third place. He took the top job in September 2024.

He simplified the menu, introduced more seating and tables in the cafés, offered free coffee and tea refills, brought back the condiment station and ceramic mugs, and encouraged baristas to write small notes on coffee cups to interact with their customers.

However, its sales have yet to see a strong recovery. It reported a 1% increase in its global comparable sales for the fourth quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year. Its stock price is down more than 6% since the start of the year.




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