Annie Choi jokes that she has about 9,500 names and drink orders stored in her head. It is her way of describing how hard she works to remember the people who walk through her door.
That habit is the clearest way to understand Found Coffee, the independent specialty coffee shop Annie opened in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, in 2015. More than a decade later, she describes it as an anchor for the neighborhood, a place where knowing a regular’s name and usual order is part of the service.
Her path there was not a straight line. Before she worked a single shift behind an espresso machine, Annie edited reality television, including Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Project Runway.
She shared that story on the Menu EN podcast, powered by Orders.co, where independent restaurant owners talk through the decisions behind their businesses. Her answers explain how a former TV editor built a coffee shop people now treat as a neighborhood hub, and why that success has not made the hard years go away.
Key takeaways from Annie Choi’s story
- She picked Eagle Rock because its families, students, and creative professionals fit her concept.
- She treats recognition as service, from learning orders to hiring for warmth.
- Her menu decisions weigh cost, demand, and the strain a drink puts on the team.
- Her Instagram features the people behind the shop and other local businesses.
- A well-loved business can still face financial pressure, and growth can bring new problems.
From Television Post-Production to Opening a Coffee Shop
Annie was born and raised in Los Angeles. She studied communications and international studies at UC San Diego and hoped to become an editor at Pixar. After training in post-production, she built a career in reality television.
She kept getting pulled toward the city’s growing specialty coffee scene. She spent time in cafes, paying attention to how each one felt, how the staff treated people, and how seriously the shop took coffee as a craft.
When she tried to make the switch, coffee shops hesitated. They did not understand why someone would leave a better-paying professional job for an entry-level role.
So she took the risk off their side of the table.
“I asked for an unpaid internship and that’s how I started in coffee,” she says.
The internship stayed unpaid for about a month. Her employer quickly saw the professionalism and sense of responsibility she brought from television, and within four months she was the general manager. Less than two years after she started as an intern, she opened Found Coffee.
Experience from outside hospitality turned out to be an asset rather than a gap.
Annie does not pretend the change felt clean. She describes uncertainty, relief, guilt, and fear all showing up together. Her advice to anyone weighing a similar move is to stop waiting for full certainty and take one concrete step.
“Do one small thing and have a friend to be there to keep you accountable.”
Her own small thing was asking to work for free. It opened a door the industry had kept closed to her.
How Her Family Shaped Her Entrepreneurial Mindset
Annie grew up around people who ran their own businesses. Her mother operated an acupuncture clinic for 26 years. Her father ran several ventures, including a denim factory, a car dealership, and a mobile grocery delivery business.
The grocery business is the story that stands out. Her father drove through neighborhoods he knew well. Customers would ask him to bring specific products on his next visit, and he would remember what each of them needed.
Annie does not draw a direct line from that route to her own counter. The parallel is still hard to miss. Her father’s business depended on remembering what people wanted. So does hers.
Growing up in an entrepreneurial immigrant family also showed her both sides of ownership: the rewards of running your own business and the hard work it takes to keep one going.
Why Annie Chose Eagle Rock for Found Coffee
Annie chose Eagle Rock on purpose. She was not looking for foot traffic alone. She wanted a neighborhood whose residents and daily routines matched the shop she planned to run.
She saw four groups she wanted to serve:
- Families with young children, who could become repeat neighborhood visitors.
- Young professionals and creative workers looking for a place to meet or work.
- Students from nearby colleges who need somewhere to study.
- Entertainment industry professionals, a group she knew from her years in television.
Her TV background became an unexpected advantage with that last group, since she had done the same work.
The name came from the same deliberate thinking. Annie gives three reasons for it: her love of vintage and found objects, her hope that people would find community in a shared space, and the spiritual meaning of being lost and found. The idea shows up in the room itself, in mismatched vintage plates and communal tables.
Operator takeaway: Foot traffic is only one location question. The other is whether the neighborhood’s people and routines fit your concept, your space, and your brand.
How Found Coffee Became an Eagle Rock Community Hub
For Annie, community shows up in specific daily habits.
The first is recognition. She works to know regulars by name and remember their drinks. She believes people notice when they are recognized, and that these small moments give them a reason to return.
“People want to be known by name,” she says.
Many restaurants formalize repeat business through customer loyalty programs for restaurants. Annie’s version starts earlier, at the counter, with a name and a usual order.
The second is where her spending goes. Found Coffee’s retail shelf favors California and West Coast vendors, with particular attention to women-owned businesses and businesses run by women of color.
“I want to pump money back into my own local economy.”
The third is sharing her audience. Annie hosts pop-ups, events, and other programming that put local businesses in front of Found Coffee’s customers. The vendor gets new exposure. The regulars get something new to come in for.
The last is belonging. Annie wants people to feel comfortable and included, whether they come alone, with friends, or with work to do.
The business logic is straightforward. Each of these habits gives a customer one more reason to choose this shop over the next one.
How Annie Builds a Menu That Balances Quality and Efficiency
Annie calls herself a specialty coffee purist. She prefers a focused menu, but she knows customers arrive with different tastes and different levels of interest in coffee.
| Menu tier | What Found Coffee offers |
| Familiar favorites | Vanilla lattes made with a house-made vanilla bean syrup |
| For coffee enthusiasts | A pour-over bar with rotating beans |
| Signature drinks | A bourbon vanilla latte and a yuzu espresso tonic, which uses a flavor tied to Annie’s upbringing |
The more useful lesson is what comes off the menu. Some seasonal drinks did not sell well enough to keep. Others were cut even though Annie liked the idea, because the ingredients cost too much or the preparation put too much pressure on the team during a rush.
A drink at Found Coffee has to taste right. It also has to sell, cover its cost, and be something her baristas can make without slowing the line during the busiest hours.
Those trade-offs sit at the center of menu management in restaurants. Every item affects cost, speed, and staff workload. A menu has to work for the business and the team as well as for the customer.
How Found Coffee Uses Social Media Without a Large Marketing Budget
Annie’s approach to social media changed during the pandemic. When customers could no longer gather inside Found Coffee the way they used to, she started posting more personal, transparent content on the shop’s Instagram, @foundcoffeela. She describes some of those posts as “love letters.”
Instead of keeping herself separate from the brand, she began writing about small business ownership, difficult experiences, community relationships, and the people behind the counter. The account also features local vendors, pop-ups, and events.
Three ideas run through her approach:
- Authenticity. Customers see the person and the experiences behind the business.
- Community participation. The feed celebrates other local businesses instead of promoting Found Coffee alone.
- Marketing through relationships. Annie believes creative, personal storytelling can help a small business connect with people without depending on paid advertising.
Her reasoning is practical.
“Small business owners don’t often have a budget for marketing. So, we got to be really creative.”
Found Coffee has also appeared in outlets such as Eater LA. Annie appreciates the recognition, but she says she has not actively pitched the shop for those lists.
For operators building their own social media strategies for restaurants, her example points to a practical coffee shop marketing idea: give people a reason to care about the business beyond what it sells.
Why Annie Hires for Warmth Before Coffee Skills
When Annie builds her team, she looks first for warmth, kindness, and an ease with people.
“Whenever I hire, I look for warmth. You cannot teach it. You cannot teach personality.”
Her reasoning is simple. Espresso technique and drink preparation can be taught on the job. A natural instinct for hospitality is much harder to build through training.
That does not mean she ignores experience. Annie still values hospitality backgrounds and the practical skills it takes to serve customers well. She puts extra weight on the interpersonal qualities that shape how a visit feels.
This ties back to the 9,500 names. A shop built on recognition only works if the people behind the counter want to recognize customers too.
Operator takeaway: Hiring decisions shape the experience customers associate with your business, along with how efficiently it runs.
After More Than a Decade, Running Found Coffee Still Comes With Difficult Decisions
Longevity has not made the business easy. Annie says 2025 and 2026 have been among the most financially difficult stretches Found Coffee has faced, and she has spent much of that time responding to challenges as they come.
She is also clear that the business remains healthy and that she is grateful for what she has built. Both things are true at once.
Growth is a good example. Annie has considered opening a second location. She hopes expansion could increase her income, but she also sees the other side: another shop means more operational responsibility and more problems to solve. She is still weighing it, and she has started working with a business coach to clarify her next steps.
Her goals outside the shop are shifting too. She would like to write books and spend some time living in Mexico City. For an owner who has spent more than a decade at the center of her business, success now includes room for her own life.
For other owners, the lesson is direct: an established, well-loved business does not remove financial pressure, and growth can bring new problems along with new revenue.
Finding Her Voice Through Entrepreneurship
Near the end of the conversation, Annie talks about learning to trust her own judgment. For years, she says, she gave too much weight to other people’s opinions and struggled to feel confident in her own voice.
Owning Found Coffee became part of how that changed. Her values now guide how she leads employees, which products she carries, how she treats customers, and how she represents the business.
She has also come to see that being recognized as a community leader carries responsibility.
“If you’re seen as a leader, you have a responsibility to be kind, to be caring, to notice.”
The last word matters. Noticing is where this story started: the regular’s name, the usual order, the 9,500 people she jokes about keeping track of. For Annie, it is also what leadership asks of her.
What Found Coffee’s Story Teaches Independent Business Owners
Found Coffee’s identity did not come from one big idea. It came from a long run of consistent decisions: where to open, what to serve, what to cut, who to hire, which local businesses to support, and how to treat each person who walks in.
Annie’s story shows both sides of independent ownership. Making people feel recognized can earn loyalty and a real place in a neighborhood. That work still has to coexist with menu discipline, careful growth decisions, and the financial realities of a hard year.
For any independent coffee shop owner, that may be the most useful takeaway. Hospitality takes intention. So does keeping the doors open.
Want to hear more of Annie Choi’s story? Watch her full conversation on Menu EN, powered by Orders.co, where independent restaurant owners share the experiences, decisions, and lessons behind their businesses.
