Irma Cicak ‘24 was on the bus one winter day in 2021 when she received a strange email: a friend request from the astrology website Astro-Seek.
“I almost deleted it, and then I checked it out later and realized we have identical placements,” Irma said, referring to their astrological natal charts. “He had a picture and a profile, and I decided to message him.”
Lein Bolukbasi read about finding his “astro-twin” online, and found Irma after looking through profiles with his same chart.
“Only she had pictures, nobody else. And I was like ‘Hmm, my astro-twin,’” he said.
Lein was living in Istanbul at the time, where he had recently graduated with a degree in interior architecture. He didn’t speak English and was using Google Translate to message Irma, he said.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I was like ‘This might be a pen pal, maybe not,’” Irma said. “And then what started as messaging once in a while for a week became messaging every day, and then we just became invested in each other.”
Irma was born and raised in Burlington, a first-generation American born into a family from Bosnia and Herzegovina. After messaging for six months, she and Lein decided she would go to visit him in Türkiye.
“It was my first solo trip. Right before I left, I was like, ‘What if I’m being catfished?’” she said.
She spent a month there with Lein before going back home, but they were already thinking about the next time they’d see each other. They soon made plans for him to visit Irma in Vermont.
“I applied for a tourist visa. Eventually, when I got approved, I was so happy,” Lein said. “I had six months to be here and then at five months I was like, ‘I can’t go, I have to be here with her.’”
The couple got married in May of 2022 while Irma was still in school.
“We graduated from very different [academic] programs,” Lein said. “But in our hearts, we always wanted to have a coffee shop. We both always dreamed about that.”
In their first two years together in Burlington, both Irma and Lein picked up multiple minimum wage jobs in the service industry, often working 12-hour days.
“I couldn’t speak English, I didn’t have confidence to be around people in the beginning,” Lein said. “So, I found a couple different jobs to make money. And Irma was also working and going to school.”
In the back of his mind, however, he knew he wanted them to start their own business.
“It was my goal to be my own boss, because I grew up in that kind of family. My family had a business,” he said. “I used to work there all the time, and I just wanted to create something here for people.”
About a year before they opened Urban Retreat, the couple revisited their dream of a coffee shop.
“Back in Türkiye and even Bosnia, the coffee culture is so different,” Irma said. “People go out to cafes and they sit and connect with people. Here in the U.S., you see a lot of people go to cafes and then they sit on their laptops, it’s a little bit more solitary.”
The idea for the coffee shop to be mobile was mutual.
“I think being here in Vermont, sometimes you feel like you’re stuck. It can feel very small,” Irma said. “We both were like, ‘We don’t want to stay in a single location.’”
In February 2024, they found a landscaping company selling a trailer on Facebook Marketplace. While the outer shell was what they were looking for, the inside needed to be totally overhauled, they said.
“We were really fortunate that my mother-in-law was able to lend her space where we could build our trailer in their driveway,” Irma said. “It took five months to build from the bottom up.”
Lein used his background in interior architecture in the design of the trailer, planning in Photoshop, AutoCAD and SketchUp.
“We learned how to use power tools. It was really cool. It was definitely a valuable experience, but it was hard,” Irma said. “We probably quit like 1,000 times.”
After considering location options around Burlington, Irma recalled the vendors she would see every day on University Place. The couple liked the idea of connecting with students and felt that the UVM community would be open to new things, they said.
“We set a date to open, which was Sept. 23, 2024,” Irma said. “We were a little bit nervous coming to UVM because there are so many coffee options already on campus.”
The response was immediately positive, with many students expressing their excitement for the creative drinks and homemade syrups, they said.
“My first job ever was at Speeder and Earl’s,” Irma said. “My beloved friend and manager, Paula, made some homemade syrups. This blew my 16-year-old mind. So that was definitely one of the things where I was like, ‘I think we should make our own syrups, too.’”
While they make all of their syrups from scratch, they also focus on organic, fair-trade items. They first learned about their coffee source, Big Jay Coffee, from the local coffee shop, the Cosmic Grind.
“When I first moved here, we used to go there all the time and sit and hang out with other friends,” Lein said. “I really liked their coffee, and it was Big Jay Coffee, and we just knew we wanted to work with him.”
Based in Montgomery, Vt., the owner of Big Jay Coffee travels to small estate farms around the world to ensure a fair wage and organic practices, Lein said.
“Most of our stuff is organic and fair trade,” Irma said. “With my agroecology background, I wanted to do something where we have those options.”
The couple also partners with local bakeries for their baked goods, this semester sourcing from Boxcar Bakery in Essex, Vt. and Pembroke Bakery in Randolph, Vt. It is important to them to lift up other local businesses, especially knowing how much work it takes, they said.
Monday through Friday, the couple gets up at 5:30 a.m. and works about 16 hours throughout the day. While the work can be tiring, they acknowledge that the outcome is worth it.
“It’s really rewarding, especially when we get to meet all of you … it’s about the connections we make every day,” Irma said.
With the past year’s success of Urban Retreat, the couple says they are considering their options for the future of the business.
“We love the freedom that comes with being mobile,” Irma said. “We don’t know if we’ll be opening a storefront anytime soon, but it is a possibility in the future. We are open for anything.”
In the meantime, Urban Retreat is still hiring for baristas, experience preferred but not required. If you are interested, please email [email protected].
“We started hiring people to help us this year, we realized we work a lot,” Irma said. “We’re definitely pretty tired, but it’s a good thing we’re in the café business.”
