La La Land Kind Café doesn’t just serve oat milk lattes in sunshine-yellow cups — it serves up a unique vision for how to do business. Born from a desire to heal systemic cracks in the foster care system, the café is flipping the script on what it means to do business with heart.
La La Land opened its first location in 2019 — a 100-year-old house in Dallas’ Lower Greenville neighborhood. Since then, the café has grown to 22 locations across Texas and California. But their story isn’t about chasing profit or dominating markets, it’s about staying true to a mission.
From hiring to product design to social media, every decision is filtered through one lens: How can we make people feel loved?
Let’s take a look at how they stay true to their mission.
Mission-Driven Coffee Shop Strategy: A Brand Built on Joy (and Strategy)
La La Land’s design isn’t accidental — it’s part of the brand’s DNA. The whitewashed interiors, pops of yellow and heart-stamped stoppers work together to signal a clear message: this is a place made for joy!
The founder, François Reihani, explains it best: “La La Land was about creating this heaven that someone walks into, and you say, ‘Hey. This is how the world should be.’”
Even the menu is designed with nostalgia and warmth in mind, offering childhood favorites and six unique coffee blends that reflect the brand’s personality. The aesthetic isn’t just trendy, it’s cohesive; and most importantly, it’s personable.
Foster Care Support Through Business: Mission First, Always
At the heart of La La Land is a mission to support youth aging out of the foster care system. What started as a small internship program has grown into a comprehensive resource offering housing support, mental health care, job training and mentorship. And while many companies add philanthropy as an afterthought, it is La La Land’s bedrock.
But here’s what makes their model even more compelling: they don’t promote this mission inside the cafés. There are no posters or donation jars. You wouldn’t know about the foster youth program unless you asked. The work speaks for itself, woven into the culture rather than advertised on the walls.
This isn’t charity for optics — it’s a systemic change disguised as a coffee run.
Hiring for Heart, Not Resumes
In a business world hyper-focused on experience and performance metrics, La La Land hires based on a simpler question, “Who are they?” They intentionally seek out team members who embody kindness, empathy and authenticity. The café doesn’t hire based on resume, but rather personality.
It’s a bold model, and it works. The authenticity La La Land puts into their hiring process spills over into every customer interaction.
They Went Viral by Being Themselves
Many brands go viral by pushing product. La La Land went viral by spreading joy. For a time, they were the most-followed café account on TikTok — thanks to their heartfelt “Drive-By Kindness” video series, where team members gave strangers genuine compliments from their car windows.
With the tagline “Normalize kindness,” the videos catapulted them to 6.3 million followers. They did it all without pushing promotions or shouting brand slogans. They spread love and people responded.
What Brands and Mission-Driven Businesses Can Learn
La La Land Kind Café proves that brand clarity and human-centered design can fuel immense, scalable growth. When you lead with values, invite people to be a part of something bigger than themselves and dare to be different, success follows.
Every great brand starts with one bold question: What do we value?
If you’re ready to answer that question, we’d love to help. Working with businesses to figure out who they are and how they want to share that message with the world is what we love to do. Take a look at what we’ve been up to lately at joagency.com/our-work and reach out to us at hello@joagency.com.