“Hot Cocoa”

Being a successful entrepreneur should be every woman’s aspiration. The number of women starting their own businesses is on the rise. A successful business female entrepreneur is no easy task. It requires making important decisions and executing them. It takes both grit and hard work. These concerns often discourage women from starting a business. We welcome women from all over Syracuse and every person who appreciated the dreams of a woman as a businesswoman is welcome to this page. There are certainly some inspiring businesswomen among us in Syracuse, New York.

At the young age of 16, she was a single mother. Her mother died of leukemia when she was 22 years old. Four years later at the age of 26, she launched her first of a chain of beauty supply stores catering to women who suffered hair loss from cancer, alopecia, or stress. Her business leadership skills and management style began when she was hired to be the store manager at Bryne Dairy on Geddes street and thereafter was hired as the Front End Customer Service Operation Manager at Wegmans grocery store. While working at Byrne Dairy she learned how to multitask and Wegmans was huge on customer service.

Her stores provided jobs to people in the community and first-time jobs for a lot of youths. She coordinated events at the Southside Innovation community and provided Eve for Juneteenth Fashion Show announcing her store move to Destiny USA mall making her the first African American woman as a tenant. Also, she attended seminars to speak to college students at Syracuse University, Morrisville College, and high schools. She spoke at several “Feel Good Look Good” events for women fighting cancer. She held fundraiser cancer events and organized a monthly sister circle welcoming all women to her store. Former Onondaga County Executive, Joanie Mahoney and ex-Mayor Matt Driscoll presented her with the Trailblazer Award at the First Spirit of Entrepreneurship Awards. She is currently the Construction Development Coordinator for the City of Syracuse. She coordinates and facilitates all pre-development meetings for the big projects in the City of Syracuse.

Who is she? She’s none other than Ulonda Hudgins-Johnson or better known as “Hot Cocoa.” The former owner of Hot Cocoa Beauty Supply Store and a Onondaga Community College graduate. Her stores were most in demand due to her setup and her excellent one-on-one customer service which made people feel like royalty from the time they walked in the door. She created a plan for her business model and stuck with it. Her brain was firing on all cylinders because can come up with an innovative idea for a business to succeed she needed to convince people to get excited about her vision. She started thinking about what she could do as a business owner because it is a very empowering position. She decided to use $500 of her own money to turn a vacant storefront space located at 3805 S. Salina Street into a beauty supply store. Expanding its presence by opening up other stores. One next to Kraft Liquor store on S. Salina Street, then from S. Salina Street to Destiny USA Mall in 2008. Another store in Utica mall and one more on N. Salina Street and one on Erie Blvd.

Like any entrepreneur, Ulonda built her business slowly and methodically. Items sold in the stores: Wigs, synthetic and human hair, and lace wigs. Accessories beauty supplies. The stores also had supplies for men and barbers. She flipped these products and reinvested the profits into more products. To build her business she relied on a set of lessons and surrounded herself with the right people. And above all treated everybody with respect. The most important thing to her was creating a relationship with the community: creating an economic engine as an opportunity for the people to have access to a decent beauty supply store. She did this to bring the community together…to help inspire the lives of individuals and to create a place where people could flourish not only as individuals but as business owners thus giving back to the community so that it’s a beautiful place to live. 

Hot Cocoa’s Beauty Supply Store in Destiny USA Mall in Syracuse, NY