Before knowing how to steam milk, calibrate a grinder, or make great chilaquiles, it’s essential to understand that hospitality is the most important thing for us.

Our advice: don’t try to analyze the coffee. Just sit and watch how the light breaks through the leaves of the trees, and how people rehearse their own happiness over freshly baked bread. That three-minute peace is probably the most expensive and rare item on our menu.

From the beginning it was built with a dream and a mission: to decentralize and take specialty coffee in a different direction with meaning, attention to small details and responsible awareness in its consumption.

I think of my childhood dinner table in Korea: warm rice, kimchi, simple soup, and love that needed no words. Today, I'm also inspired by Mexican markets, small kitchens, and pots marked by time. Imperfect places, but alive.

The initial, distinctive proposition that served as inspiration and continues to this day was the sale and playback of vinyl records, making them pioneers at the time in merging these two passions. There couldn't have been a better combination.

Often, customers return to share something they made from the last book they borrowed: cookies, a slice of cake, or even sourdough bread. It's deeply moving; when books come alive and create connections, our daily lives take on a little more meaning.

Democratizing specialty coffee and removing that “untouchable” or pretentious label from it. We always say our mantra: “Specialty isn’t fancy, but it tastes like fancy.” We want people to lose their fear of trying something different.

We are inspired by a love for coffee as a ritual. We come from a Lebanese background where coffee is a language of respect and generosity.Coffee was always the central element at any family or friends gathering. It represents an open-door way of living: offering coffee is saying, “I open my home and my heart to you.”

Life, art, and photography are fleeting. This project was born from —and continues to grow through— a concept of resilience. We see it as something ever-changing: adapting to the market and the goals we want to achieve, while keeping its core identity. Our challenge is to avoid monotony, and we put our heart and dedication into making the gallery grow and evolve.

In the book world, it's a common saying that you'll never have the book a customer asks for. Our bookstore is more about being captivated by the opportunity presented by a book that happens to occupy a certain space.

Bookstores have basic routines: sweeping, taking out the trash, organizing books, etc. One of the most exciting moments happens when books arrive that need to be cataloged, appraised, or even researched. The world of used books is a map without end.

We expanded our ideas, our activities, our commitment to the world of books, to our community, to the causes we consider just. We broadened our way of thinking and seeing the world of books in which we were moving.