Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonny Mocha.
Hi Jonny, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Unhinged Coffee & Co was born from a simple truth: life is messy, people are complicated, and sometimes the best thing you can do is show up, grab a cup of coffee, and be honest about where you’re at. My partner Cody Vaughn and I started it as a mobile coffee cart in Knightdale, and somewhere along the way it became something bigger than coffee. It became a safe space. The third space we’d all been craving. The kind of community that welcomes people exactly as they are and reminds them that life is chaotic and it’s okay to not be okay.
The cart eventually outgrew itself. In April 2026, we soft-opened our first brick-and-mortar at 319 N First Ave in Knightdale, with our grand opening not yet announced, at which time the space will move to a day-to-night concept: specialty coffee at all times, craft beer, wine, and THC beverages in the evening. Alongside the shop, we also run The Unhinged Trailer stationed at Hartwell Raleigh Downtown, serving 7 days a week, and two mobile event carts that keep us active across the region.
Through all of it, the name has been the anchor. “Unhinged” was always intentional. We belive each of us is a little unhinged in one way or another, and the brand exists so people know they have permission. Permission to be imperfect, to laugh at yourself, to admit you’re running on caffeine, little sleep, and questionable decisions. We create the space for vulnerability, wrap you in warmth and good humor, and that’s the heartbeat of everything we do.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Honestly, no, it hasn’t all been smooth. Every small business has its ups and downs, and we’ve had our share of the typical learning curves that come with building something from the ground up.
But for us, the biggest challenge has been a little more personal. Our mission is deeply rooted in mental health advocacy and awareness, and somewhere along the way we realized that creating a space for everyone in our community sometimes meant giving up parts of our own sanity to do it. The hard part has been learning the balance. Remembering that in order to create space for others, we also have to create space for ourselves to be human and not burn out.
That’s a lot easier said than done, especially if you know Cody and I personally. But we’re making steps, and that’s what matters.
Truthfully, from the bottom of our hearts, we couldn’t do any of this without our community, our team, our patrons, and every single person who has walked in just to say hi or grab a coffee. For that, we feel beyond blessed.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a Marketing Creative through and through. More specifically, whether a business, professional, or nonprofit, I help figure out who you are and build the marketing to back it up. My career actually started after launching my own business and realizing the marketing strategy behind it was the real engine driving its growth. I’ve been chasing that work ever since.
These days, while I still take on a handful of contract clients, my focus is primarily on Unhinged Coffee & Co as Co-Founder, where I lead everything brand and marketing.
What I specialize in is brand strategy. My favorite work is the part most people skip: figuring out who a brand actually is before designing how it looks. Strategy first, then we build. Strategy is creative. Creativity is strategic. That’s the whole point. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to touch projects with brands both big and small.
What sets me apart, I think, is that I don’t separate the strategist from the creative. A lot of marketers are great at one and outsource the other. I do both. I want the data to drive the direction and the design to carry the soul, and I’ve built my career around proving those two things can live in the same room.
What I’m most proud of, though, is Unhinged. Not because the brands and campaigns I’ve worked on don’t matter to me, they absolutely do, but because Unhinged is the first time I’ve been able to apply everything I’ve learned to something that’s fully mine. Watching customers connect with our mission, our team, and our space the way they do is the kind of thing you can’t replicate. That’s the work I want to keep building on.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Luck has played a bigger role than I’d like to admit.
You can put in the work, build the brand, sweat every detail, and still need a hundred small things to break the right way for any of it to actually land. We’ve been lucky in nearly all of them.
Even having our brick-and-mortar in Knightdale is lucky. The right space, in the right town, at the right moment in our growth, is not something we made happen on our own. We’ve been welcomed by a community that didn’t have to take us in, supported by local leaders who didn’t have to show up, and embraced by patrons, vendors, artists, and small businesses who could have just kept scrolling past us. They didn’t.
We’ve had the right people walk through the door at the right time, more than once. Team members who believed in what we were building. A creative community that filled our vendor inquiries before the doors were even open. Town officials who actually picked up the phone. Customers who became regulars before the place is even finished.
I know enough about how this works to know what’s earned and what’s gifted. A lot of this has been gifted. And the only thing we know how to do with that is keep showing up, keep doing the work, and keep being grateful out loud.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.unhingedcoffee.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unhingedcoffee.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Unhinged-Coffee-Co-61575654023645/
