We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Annie Choi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Annie below.

Annie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Day to day the world can seem like a tough place, but there’s also so much kindness in the world and we think talking about that kindness helps spread it and make the world a nicer, kinder place. Can you share a story of a time when someone did something really kind for you?

She’s probably not going to want me to name her, so I will say refer to my best friend’s mom by her initials ML. Before opening Found Coffee, I ran an IndieGoGo campaign to raise capital. Because she didn’t want any commission/fees to be pulled from her donation, ML wrote me a check directly…for a very large amount of money. I have to emphasize: A VERY LARGE AMOUNT. Our yellow espresso machine — my beautiful workhorse and the centerpiece of the shop — therefore has a plaque on the machine dedicated to her. The extremely generous amount that ML donated covered the cost of my espresso machine, my main moneymaker at Found Coffee. That machine is a central piece of equipment of our operations. It was an extremely kind, generous, and thoughtful gesture. I am thankful for her and her generosity forever and ever.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As a born and raised native Angeleno, I thought that Hollywood would be the perfect place to do what I loved: tell stories. A career in movies and television therefore made “perfect” sense. After a short 18 months of working on popular shows (e.g. Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Real World), I was able to attain the position of Additional Video Editor on one of the most well-revered shows in television—Project Runway.

But I was unhappy. This is where coffee entered the picture.

Even while I was working in the entertainment industry, I wanted to open a coffee shop in Los Angeles. A coffee shop is a place filled with stories: the baristas’ and customers’ personal life stories, the spirit of the neighborhood the coffee shop is located in, and even down to the coffee’s journey into the customer’s hands itself. And in such a lonely place that Los Angeles can sometimes be, stories amongst community is essential.

My background also lends itself to my reasons for opening up a small business. My parents owned and operated an independent acupuncture clinic for 23 years. My father owned a multitude of small businesses throughout his own career (e.g. mobile grocery truck, denim clothing factory, used car dealership). It is no coincidence that I inherited my parents’ entrepreneurial spirit.

I was the full-time General Manager at Demitasse Santa Monica, the second Los Angeles location of a premiere and well-respected specialty coffee shop. Since my start at the company in March 2013, I was promoted from Intern to Barista to Director of Social Media to Manager in a mere four months. I opened Found in February 2015.

The Found Coffee Community is why I continue to do what I do: they are warm, inclusive, caring, loyal, generous, hilarious, kind, and truly the most wonderful gift that I could’ve ever asked for and have received. They support my main mission and vision at Found. I seek to carry and support both local and California vendors, and moreso in the last few years, AAPI female small business owners. Our community supports them by supporting Found.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Found Coffee has been broken into four times and the first two times happened six months apart from each other. The first break-in felt quite violating. Every single break-in afterwards, however, I could also weirdly experience that my spirit was being refined to become tougher and face (almost) anything that would come my way as a small business owner.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

This may be a response that’s far more personal than what was asked, but I am a lifelong Christian who regrettably left the church three years ago. I’ve always thought that the local coffee shop / barber shop / gym mirrored the church. In these small businesses, community is brought together in ways that neighborhoods in large cities desperately need in these times. Hence, my little coffee shop has given me a physical platform for regulars to meet in PERSON and see the same people, at the same time, almost daily.

Community is extremely important for me, and I know that after eight years of small business ownership, I do this very well: I launch design-forward spaces that gather community. The pandemic put a wrench in community gathering, and thus, I started to inject my personal voice into my shop’s social media pages. I’m a firm believer that social media both isolates and connects. Hence, I started writing love letters to the community; the community feels my presence both online and in person. But what’s more important: they feel the presence of other people…and this connection of community is what continues to motivate me in making my space — whether in person or over social media — more warm, inclusive, and welcoming.

A very tangible, simple example of solidifying community is by making the customer feel known. We ask every customer’s name after they submit their order. Found Coffee is known for being the “Cheers” of coffee shops — a place where they know your name. And it’s true: we know the name of every adult, child, and dog that walks through our doors. Our regulars comment on how much they love this; our Yelp and Google reviews also reflect the same sentiment. It’s a simple act that ripples into a beautiful semblance of community.

I’ve coined the term “Found Coffee Community” whenever I write love letters on Instagram. In seasons of personal isolation (i.e. the pandemic), I leaned on my Found Coffee Community to fill my soul. I continue to do that every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.foundcoffeela.com
• Instagram: @foundcoffeela

Image Credits
Wonho Frank Lee Erin Hoffstetter