Who Am I? Who is Ai? Where is CAFE IF?
Last month, I made a new friend Alison in our coffee shop. Alison was born in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin, and she wondered if I was Chinese. It is not too hard to make anybody have the same question Alison had because of the Chinese characters on our store signage:
如果咖啡店
What does that mean?
“Hello, my name is Ai. And I am the founder and CEO of CAFE IF 如果咖啡店.”
If I were to talk in a Silicon Valley startup roadshow, I probably would say the above line. But in the hospitality world that means I am the owner this coffee shop, who is also the general manager, the graphic and interior designer, the social media marketing person, the photographer and the plumber, the bookkeeper and the barista.
Making coffee was never my dream job because I did not raised even drinking coffee. But having a coffee shop, where is surrounded by delicious coffee smells, gathers interesting minds and souls, was always in my day and night dreams.
Prior to my coffee journey, I was a menswear designer working in New York City. I’ve designed for some of the well-known brands in the fashion world, made coffee runs and served desserts to my favorite fashion designers, and sketched and sewed tailored suits and dresses on big white cutting tables in Parsons the School of Design at 2am in the morning. I lived in New York for 5 years, and I loved how easy and quick to connect with other people in the city. When I moved to Los Angeles, that seemed like a puzzle to solve to me. For which it has finally pushed me to start building a space, a platform to simply connect with others.
If you had been reading carefully enough, you probably have found quite a few grammar or vocabulary errors in my writing. Please tell me about it, I am not so embarrassed. In fact, my boyfriend Tony has made fun of my pronunciation of the word “soon” for the entire past two days, and that has brought so much joy to our weekend time. Indeed, I was born and raised in China. I immigrated to Canada when I was 18 with my family, and graduated with a bachelor of Economics (like many of your Asian friends in college) then realized Economics was never a passion to me nor a choice of my career. I was good at math and doing research on Economic history, but I’ve always enjoyed doing more in the creative field. I love writings, paintings, taking random photos of tree leaves in Central Park and strangers on Broadway, and drawing beautiful high heels or picking up gingham shirts for my geeky EEE friends who would like to impress their girlfriends.
I spent a lot of time writing though. Not only I love writing blogs and short stories, but I also love reading stories from my friends who live in other countries. Remember I’ve spent my first 18 years in China, then 4 years in Vancouver BC, then 1 year in Birmingham UK, then 5 years in NYC - I have many friends who share the same living-abroad backgrounds, who have a lot to say about what they have experienced. So I started a blog named CAFE IF 如果咖啡店 for all these friends to write(or bitch about) their lives.
I called it “CAFE” because in my mind, a cafe, or a coffee shop is where you meet people and chat with those who share the same interests and become friends. And I called it “IF” because I love the fact that as human beings, we can imagine without a limit. There are so many things can happen in life if you really think about it.
After a while, when CAFE IF 如果咖啡店 blog had grown to a good size of writers and readers(this was way before today’s crazy social media era), people started to ask me “where is your coffee shop” and I had to repeat many times a day that “I DO NOT have a coffee shop in reality - this is only a blog”.
“Oh.. I see! It would be great if you opened one in the future!” someone commented.
“Yea, I guess so. It would be really fun. But probably only if I retired, or if I moved to Venus and knew nobody. ” I replied.
And that was true. It had been easy for me to meet interesting people and make new friends in New York, and I had not yet have complaints on lacking parties to attend. But life is full of unexpected events. I didn’t know Los Angeles was too big that the only way I could “sort of” making friends was to meet people on Tinder and Bumble and to be frank about “I am new to LA, want to make friends only.” And I didn’t know eventually I swiped over all the potential candidates in my area and finally had to admit that asking to only make friends on dating apps would just make me look dishonest or naive.
But I do need new friends to explore the beaches, to eat tacos and quesadillas, and to vent about traffics. Finding a sense of belonging and solving the “how to make friends” puzzle had became a priority in my life. I was thinking to myself many days and nights, If I had made friends through CAFE IF 如果咖啡店 before over the internet, why couldn’t I make more friends through CAFE IF 如果咖啡店 in reality? Everybody needs a sense of belonging, and everybody can tolerate a new friend in his/her neighbourhood.
If what you want doesn’t exist, create it.
I flew back and forth between the US, Canada and China to get to know how to start a business in America and how to make coffee. By the end of the summer, I have made my decision to pause my fashion career and join the magical world of food and beverage. And by the end of the following spring, I started a coffee shop in the city of West Hollywood named CAFE IF 如果咖啡店.
And you know the rest of this story, or at least you know the taste of our coffee.
Disneyland is The Happiest Place On Earth, What About Coffee Shops?
It was a warm late summer Friday afternoon back in Tianjin, China.
My grandma Jane sat on her light brown leather couch with her eyes closed, listening with only half an ear to her daily stock market report and started humming of her favorite song “Great Ocean, My Home”. I was on my computer booking my flight ticket back to the US and made a decision to pause my fashion career.
Suddenly, she had her eyes wide opened when I told her I was going to open a coffee shop in Los Angeles.
“Oh dear. You’re going to have so much fun!” she sat up straight with her hands resting on her thighs and said, “listening to old vinyls, painting, relaxing while drinking coffee in your own coffee shop!”
Grandma Jane was quite right. I did have a lot of fun in my coffee shop over the past three years running it. Yet the “listening to old vinyls, painting, relaxing” has not yet really happened during the time being.
Everywhere is work.
From adjusting your daily coffee flavors(we call it “dialing-in” in specialty coffee), to debating between different Oatmilk(currently we are serving Califia Farms but we also had the famous Oatly and Minor Figures before) I should order for the following week, to scratching off the tini-tiny soap stains on the bathroom wall… If you were a detail-oriented Virgo, try working in a restaurant first before you claim you are a perfectionist!
I love it. Every aspect of it.
Because when you work for yourself, you know most of the time and energy you invested is going to have a solid return(I do not mean only in the monetary aspect). It may take longer than you expected in your ideal world, but it will happen eventually. Of course, you are going to burn out before it happens if you were not able to seek for a way breathing between your tasks. But our goal as entrepreneurs is to not burning out our energy before we even see our success, so please relax. Nothing is the end of the world. And if the end was coming, there isn’t anything we can do about it.
I have met quite a few coffee shop owners. Big ones, small ones, industry recognized shops, profitable shops and shops that had to close down. Running a coffee shop is not for everybody. If you knew that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, you probably should also know that coffee shops are less the happiest place. Just like running any other business, it requires massive amount of effort building and serving the physical store, developing the brands, and tedious daily operational tasks from managing your staff to entering your expenses. But we are not selling dreams in coffee shops like Disneyland is, we are selling your daily needs, we are supporting running everyone’s reality.
One day, one day all the extra work might be done by robots, and leaves us coffee shop owners to only enjoy drinking coffee, listening to old vinyls, painting and relaxing. But before that, we only wish your time spending at our coffee shops are always your happiest moments during the day.
New Candle Making Event!
I met Natalie, the founder and CEO of Cozier, in our coffee shop this year. Like most of my “regulars”, we started to chat after she realized that I remember her drink(the Rose Latte) before knowing her by name (which I don’t usually ask on customers’ first few visits since I am relatively shy).
We have a similar background. Natalie is also from Canada, studied in art school and worked in menswear. She paused fashion last year and launched her candle brand Cozier, which quickly became a supplier of well-known retailers such as Nordstrom and Anthropologie. With Natalie’s work experience in buying, she knows the right languages talking to retailers; but more importantly, her candles are made with natural coconut wax, all hand-poured to beautiful hand crafted ceramic jars. Non-toxic ingredient and sustainable packaging are important to consumers today. The well mixture of right business strategies with great products is always the door to success.
At the end of the day, Natalie and I are two girls who enjoy facials in Ktown and get lashes done every three weeks, so we became friends. As CAFE IF’s 3 years birthday is approaching, I invited Natalie to co-host our anniversary party. During the event, Cozier team will set up a candle making bar for our friends to make their own candle with various scent options.
Besides all the amazing scents Cozier uses, Natalie is also going to pick some coffee scents for us to add to these CAFE IF X COZIER candles. Have you had any candles that smells like your favorite Colombian coffee? If not, you should definitely come make one!
Happy Birthday. We Are 3!
A three-year-old baby would finally be able to not only talk, but also “think” and “memorize”. Now that we are a three years old coffee shop, we are more recognized by the neighbourhood and the coffee community. We have accomplished a lot but long way to go. Thank you all for supporting us over the past three years!
Here are some photos from yesterday’s event.
Memory of Greg
When thinking about “coffee shop”, do you think about coffee or shop? As.. about the drinks first or the space first?
I am quite a visual oriented person; so every time I think about a coffee shop, my brain starts to generate images of that space first.
Space creates relationships among objects and people. These relationships can be short and shallow, or long and deep depending on time each party has spent within this space.
Hence, space also creates stories and memories, as the byproduct of relationship.
Every coffee shop owner has his/her unique definition of coffee shop. Mine was “memories”. Using the limited space to connect people, and thus create memories to make up our lives. I believe lives are pieced by stories and memories. They are what differentiate us from each other. My life is different from yours not only because where I came from or what I look like, it is also because the memories of my point of view, my prospective, my personal and unique feelings to the rest of the world.
Some lives are shorter than the others, but they have probably stored and represented many more memories and stories . I sometimes even think that maybe, maybe we have all given the same amount of allowance for memories and stories(as we have the same amount of empty space to create) upon birth. Once the canvas is full of beautiful drawings, the time of one’s current life is up.
-
Greg was probably the person I saw the most during my past three years in this coffee shop. And the earliest. I always thought that my coffee would start one’s day, but somehow Greg started my day making coffee.
He would get to the shop before I show up half awake, or immediately after I opened. It wasn’t always pleasant to see him standing leaning against the wall under my signage, having an empty cup in his hands, waiting. Especially on the days that I was running late because I missed the alarm or could not find parking. Until one day I was so late, that I thought I had basically destroyed the trust between my business and my customer(Greg as the representation). I was late for more than 45 minutes. I rushed into the shop uneasily, getting ready for angry faces, empty store front or upset yelp reviews. But I saw Greg. He was still leaning against the wall, holding his cup, looking down to the sidewalk. He turned around and looked at me, said:” I was worried about you that I was scared.”
That was the moment I realized that Greg’s wait was what woke me up everyday, that alert of being responsible and consistent was what started my day. It wasn’t only him needed that coffee, but I needed his wait, his urge, his care.
Greg sometimes would make drawings on cups he used, and he always used the cups multiple times. Morning after morning, until they were too soft that one more drop of coffee would break it. That was his way of saving the trees, until one day he got himself a reusable coffee cup. It was an ordinary cup with stainless steel exterior and a plastic orange rim. It wasn’t the most beautiful cup, and the interior was also plastic. So I was wondering how was that environmental friendly if it was plastic inside? Or how would this object be “OK” for his artistic eyes? I meant to bring him a “prettier” cup without plastic someday. And then I got busy and forgot. And I remembered it again one day, but I no longer work everyday so I forgot again.
Greg was a painter. A painter is usually very complex. But his coffee was very simple. I don’t remember him drinking anything else other than drip coffee with whole milk. Nothing else. I don’t even remember him trying any of my samples or my pastries, or whatever the crazy food I was testing. Serving in food industry was not easy, but serving Greg was that simple. He did not even have a complaint when I switched roasters. He was happy with our coffee. But I knew he was not a simple man. He must have so many stories to tell, so much emotions to express. Because the most important inspiration for an artist, as far as I understand, is feeling.
Greg said he walked a lot. There were a couple times I was driving and saw him on Wilshire blvd in Beverly Hills. He said he used to walk from West Hollywood to Santa Monica Pier. That’s about 10 miles each way. But he said he’s getting old so he had reduced his walk to a shorter distance.
“To Beverly Hills?” I said.
“That’s right. The glamorous part of LA.” He said.
“You mean the fake part of LA?”
Then we laughed.
Later, I started to hire more baristas. Mariana was taking half of my morning shifts, and then her sister Ren came on board and started taking half of her shifts. Then everybody started to seeing Greg as the first customer and human alarm of the day. But no one had complaint for the same reason I had, everybody loved him. He wasn’t the chatty type, but he was the sweetest guy.
Greg would bring us lunch. On the days I got sick, or I spoke casually in the morning about my sensitive stomach. Sometimes I was not even talking to him, I was only trying to make some personal conversations with our customers. But he would show up in the middle of the day, with a plastic bag of two boxes of dumplings from a Chinese restaurant. He would put the bag on the table, said no words, walked away.
He would bring us Christmas gifts. Not those you pick at the last minute because you needed to gift someone. He probably did a lot of research with his understanding of each of our personalities. He would pick things as if he knew us for so long, or as if he saw us growing up. Then he would give us the gift with his particular comments.
“Picking you girls gifts are freakin hard! But I hope you won’t threw them right away.”
“You girls have brought me the mother/father side out. Goddamnit!”
…
Life can be so short that you will never forget the last text you received from your friend, or the last joke your friend made about his back pain, or the last time you hugged each other.
Life can be so long that you regret forever that you have forgot to reply to a text, or missed a call, or not just forced your friend into your car and see a doctor.
With my deepest condolence and love, my imperfect grammar and choice of vocabularies, this is my memory of this wonderful and gentle soul, which will forever remain in my heart and the build and history of CAFE IF. May he rest in peace; may that place with no pain have good coffee and good people; may love be always around him.
To our dearest friend Greg Andrew Anka (1964-2019).
2019.10.13
Happy 5th Anniversary!
Time flies. Even though last year was super crazy, I feel so lucky that our shop has survived because of all the supports from our customers & all the hard work our amazing team has done. So…
Happy Birthday CAFE IF!
I have so much that I want to talk about, or let’s say, to update you. I hope you are enjoying our coffee, matcha, pastries and food, as well as my personal journeys about coffee, business, and just life.
The past year we have all experienced something different and unexpected. Besides COVID that wiped my finally blooming business off to ground zero, I actually had a great year. I first got married then had my baby, Lily.
Some of my friends were shocked when they heard my updates as they thought I was gonna continue being a free spirit for a while, but all of a sudden I’ve got a husband and a kid.
Well, life is about the unknown and all the possibilities, isn’t it?
Besides my personal life, I’ve had 3 amazing baristas that helped me went through the most difficult time when I first had my baby. James, Josh and Valerie are all unique in their own ways but very creative and professional. Since we cannot host any parties this year, for our birthday we went to Korean BBQ together. And during our dinner, we have shared some fun facts about each others. Would you like to get to know us a bit more?
But first of all, you will need to meet Cappucino, my calico cat. Why? Because who doesn’t like a cup of cappuccino!
Cappucino (She/her)
Favorite thing is hair tie.
Loves to lay on her back.
Eats strawberries and cucumbers to keep her fur shiny!
Valerie
Loves pets, especially dogs.
Has a passion in makeup and beauty.
Considers herself VERY awkward ;)
James
Cannot swim. And doesn’t plan to learn either! And he was born in SoCal… :P
Doesn’t play any instruments even he is very creative.
Wants to try skydiving soon!
Josh
Has 3 bunnies.
Has a music degree!
Recently gained quite a few personal fans as a barista :)
Ai
Is a menswear designer.
Didn’t really speak English until 18.
Little caffeine makes her sleepy. Therefore she needs a lot of them, like... an entire coffee house filled with amazing coffee!