Help Cafe Aficionado Stay Open
In the spring of 2018 we opened our doors to our city and community to bring a space where people can gather that felt like home. Our vision was to be able to bring coffee culture to the San Fernando valley, to bring community to the local students, a space where long time friends could meet up for a good cup of coffee, where parents could play board games with their kids, where first dates happen and where couples come to share their favorite breakfast. For two years we have worked hard to bring our passion for community to life! We've hosted trivia nights, art shows, speed dating events, art shows, pop ups , fundraisers and anything that would bring people together and to serve our city and community.
We pride ourselves in serving our city and giving back to our community. Our customers andcity are why we do what we do. The last 2 years we have spent trying to make our shop feel like home for so many. We want to know you, your spouse , your kids, how you're doing, if yougot the promotion at work, we want to meet your new baby or meet your parents when theycome into town. We believe in supporting our city and helping it thrive by supporting our local small businesses, Our pastries come from a local bakery, our coffee roaster is a local coffee shop and roaster based in Los Angeles and we promote lots of small businesses on our Instagram because we believe that small businesses that are mom and pop is what being character to a city and invest in our communities by employing locals, and giving back to our city when possible.
When the pandemic hit, we were forced to furlough our employees and be the only staff on duty. We made adjustments like bringing our kids to work (which didn't last long lol), offered free delivery, added and removed some items on our menu, provided outdoor seating, cutting our hours in half because we have two small kids who still need us to help with distance learning and a one year old and cutting our days that we were open so we would be able to rest as well. The bills have piled up and there's were months where we weren't able to pay our rent which was something we never missed when we're completely open. We never thought that this would of gone on as long asit has and we didn't anticipate that we would be denied help everywhere we applied for government assistance.
But also The pandemic also allowed us to meet so many new customers and we were Still able to do community initiatives like adopt a frontliner where we brought coffee and pastries funded by our customers and a fundraiser for two families who were in need. We haven't let all of 2020 take away all the joy from us! We love our customers who are more like family!
our landlord has been gracious with us and we paid rent for the last two months but the holidays have kept us afloat. But we're still behind months on rent and have spoken to our landlord about tacking it onto our 2021 rent . We were confident by now, 10 months later that we would of been approved for some government assistance like a loan or a grant but nothing has been approved and no relief has been sent out our way. We have spent a lot of time applying and to be continuously denied. It's been discouraging but we have been hustling to keep our doors open anyways we can! So with 2021 being a few days away we humbly needed to start asking for help because we anticipate January to be slow but still need to pay rent. The pandemic has dropped our business down to only 20 % of what we usually would draw in. Some days bringing in less than $50. But we haven't given up and we don't want to! We want to keep on going to as long as we can! But we needthe help of our community. We wrestled with creating this go fund me but our community voted on starting a go fund me to help us! This amount will help us if we're short for January orany of the months ahead but mainly focusing on January because it's the first month after the holidays and our first month of padded rent. Hopefully it'll give us enough time to figure out what else we can do to drive business upwards in 2020. Help us keep our doors open and to keep community alive for our city! Even $1 helps us and we're so grateful for any amount ofhelp! If you prefer to help and donate directly please send us a DM on Instagram and we would love to connect with you!
this is no pressure to our community! Even if you can't give, please keep us in prayer during this time as we navigate what's ahead for us and hopefully keeping our doors open! We don't want to have to stop being your favorite local go to coffee shop! Thank you to those who encouraged and pushed us to share our story. Thank you in advance for reading this and please share if you feel like it! At this point we're goingto take it day by day, week by week and monthby month and hope for the best and work hardfor what means the most to us and that's all of you out there! Let's hope we get approved soon for the next loan we apply for and keep pushing forward!
