Case Study: How One Los Angeles Café is Overcoming Challenges

Kindness and Mischief founder Mo Maravilla shares how she’s pivoting to keep her business afloat during trying times.

BY MELINA DEVONEY
FOR BARISTA MAGAZINE

Featured image courtesy of Kindness and Mischief

Mo Maravilla is the founder and owner of Kindness and Mischief Coffee Roasters (K+M) in Highland Park, Los Angeles. She is a Filipino immigrant with a fierce, energetic, colorful presence and a self-proclaimed “villainous laugh.”

After nine and a half years of business, Mo was forced to cut K+M’s business hours from daily to Thursday through Sunday this past June. Although the move was a devastating necessity to keep business alive, Mo is truly excited for this new era that she coined “Long Weekend at K+M.”

Nearly a Decade of Kindness and Mischief

Although it’s easy to pass by K+M’s small storefront on the most lively street of Highland Park, once inside, it’s unforgettable.

Every corner is colorful and full of plants, disco balls, and seasonal decorations. A sign above the bar reads, “No extra charge for alt milk since day one, b-tches.” Energetic music—likely T-Pain, Beyoncé or Bad Bunny—rounds out the vibe.

The entire K+M team proudly represents systemically marginalized communities and people of color. Mo describes K+M baristas and cooks as “joyous” and “absolutely so nice and kind.” Everyone on the team works hard as can be in the café, where they are free to fully flaunt their personalities and values, even if that involves a little mischief.

Fostering this spirit is Mo’s number-one priority. Since opening the doors of her café, she has aspired to help passionate baristas and cooks thrive in doing what they love, without relying on multiple jobs to pay their bills. “We would not be doing all the sh-t that we do if I wanted to be rich. I’ve never wanted to be that place that only focuses on the bottom line,” Mo says. “I’ve only ever wanted enough.”

At the height of K+M, Mo could happily give her team raises and treat them to regular staff outings. However, like many small businesses in Los Angeles, K+M never generated enough revenue to offer employees complete financial security and health insurance. Mo is still determined to someday make it happen, even in light of K+M’s recent financial struggles.

Making a “Gnarly” Decision

K+M is not unique regarding its waning sales over the last half-decade, especially not in Los Angeles. Businesses of all sizes haven’t been able to escape blow after blow to the local economy: the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the writers’ strikes in 2023, this year’s Palisades and Eaton fires, and the Trump administration’s tariffs and ongoing stoking of social unrest.

“I had known for quite some time how bad it was getting, but I didn’t want to pull the trigger on doing anything drastic because I love my team, I love my community. I want (the café) to be open as many days as possible,” Mo says.

In the last few years, Mo had put one of her favorite parts of the job—creating fun menu items and collaborating with friends and staff—on the back burner in order to simplify bar workflow and cut costs. K+M had become what “felt like a latte factory,” with a line of baristas slinging an iteration of the same seasonal drinks month after month.

“I love our seasonals, but when you’re running seven days a week trying to survive, there’s not much space for creativity, no bandwidth for new stuff,” Mo says.

Mo didn’t want K+M’s struggles to extend to the shop, where customers could sense the lost faith and tanked morale as soon as they walked in. This summer, she finally reached a point where she had to grapple with closing K+M altogether.

Mo knew she’d regret closing without trying absolutely everything possible—everything except letting employees go or cutting their hours. But Mo had already cut her own pay, borrowed money to make payroll, took out an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, and maxed out eight credit cards, totaling around $70,000.

After months of tracking K+M’s finances and strategizing with her team leads, “the math was not mathing,” Mo says, “The writing was very, very clear on the wall.” K+M would be in the hole by summer. And June showed K+M no reprieve.

Mo has learned to act fast on what her heart tells her. This time around, it told her “change or die,” and that waiting it out would only dig K+M deeper into its own grave.

So she made what she calls the “gnarly” decision to close up shop half the week and invest everything in bringing customers the best K+M experience possible on the four days per week it would be open.

Valuing transparency, Mo first told her employees the deal individually, then shared her financial spreadsheets in a team meeting. As Mo expected, not everyone agreed with her strategy, which she attributes to the norm of companies prioritizing the bottom line. “It is very difficult to unlearn that money is the most important thing,” Mo says.

Redirecting Toward Joy

Mo calls K+M’s new format Long Weekend. The strategy nixes the demoralizing slow hours and maximizes the profitable ones. Employees maintain the same number of weekly hours—they’re just packed into four days of intense work. And she joins them behind the bar.

“Time’s gonna fly, and I feel good about having everyone on shift because we need them,” she says. “We are just gonna party all shift.”

Mo redirected K+M toward what brings her joy: sourcing unique coffee from new roasters, experimenting with flavors from around the world, collaborating with local businesses, and diving deeper into the “fun, nerdy sh-t.”

Knowing full well that a game plan based on “kind of bougie” and “definitely coffee-nerdy” drinks was going to be “expensive as all hell,” Mo thought, “If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna go out like a bright, shining star.”

And the Long Weekend menu truly goes all out. Drinks are split into categories of “kindness” and “mischief.” The former are signature drinks (regulars are hooked on “The OG Kindness” and the banana milk latte), and the latter are the new, rotating selection of one-of-a-kind pourovers (e.g., SCOBY Anaerobic 72H and “Banana Split” toffee culturing).

“I hadn’t had that much excitement about our menu offering in a long time,” Mo says of the experience of dialing in the “mischief” pourovers. With more time to breathe and brainstorm, Mo and her kitchen team are also coming up with themed food specials featuring cuisines from across the world, like an adobo mushroom breakfast burrito.

Those three days that K+M is closed to the public, however, will not be quiet ones. Having successfully hosted coffee classes in the past, Mo intends to offer up more educational workshops and other outside events Monday through Wednesday. “I’m so excited to be able to use the space in different ways to create accessibility in other ways,” she says.

K+M’s Strengths Poise “Long Weekend” for Success

Leading with authenticity and a “people first” mission, the K+M brand is truly a reflection of Mo. “The only way I know how to be is authentic to myself,” she says. “I don’t want to put time and effort and resources into something that I don’t fully believe in.”

Mo’s definition of a “successful” business is one that cares deeply for its employees and customers above all else. “Leadership is just lessons in humanity. Good leaders understand how to be a good human to others, and also to (themselves),” she says.

Treating people with kindness and respect has always been Mo’s North Star. Her focus on the well-being of her team and community is what sets K+M apart, and its biggest strength is the team that follows suit.

Mo’s confidence in her enthusiastic and dedicated team going full force into Long Weekend never wavered. As the leader, she shows up to work each day and sets the tone for a give-it-all-you-got culture. She hires baristas who thrive in the hustle with top-notch latte art and customer service, and who can dial in and extract super-unique coffees to perfection.

K+M’s Strongest Marketing Asset Is Its Support Network

Mo has successfully broadened K+M’s reach and revenue stream through public coffee classes, as well as a mobile coffee cart; however, neither is as valuable as the community she has cultivated through shared values.

“If this isn’t your jam, then that’s cool. You don’t gotta be here,” she says. “We have all these amazing humans who come here because they want to feel seen and accepted.”

Mo says and does what she authentically feels on and offline. Her far-reaching involvement in her local and global communities, combined with local word-of-mouth, organically grew K+M’s Instagram presence, which now boasts 13.1K followers and counting.

K+M’s fun, vibrant Instagram grid is sprinkled with socio-political calls to action and transparent, thoughtful narratives. This resonates with her customer base, which is largely comprised of a diverse group of politically active creatives. Additionally, a significant portion of them include the 50% of consumers who are willing to pay more for supreme quality and sustainable coffee.

“99.99999% of our customer base are just kind, nice, good people, creative people. And that’s what you see reflected behind bar,” Mo says.

Case in point: Upon hearing the Long Weekend strategy, one barista piped up right away to ask, “What about our regulars who come in Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday?” Mo was touched by the barista’s genuine “people first” perspective.

K+M truly fosters a reciprocal relationship between its team and customers. Throughout all of K+M’s challenging times, regulars have continued to check in on the well-being of the team, and even a few have offered K+M financial support.

“I knew so fully that my community would hold me in this hell-ish moment,” Mo says about launching Long Weekend. “It feels like a baby learning how to walk. But what feels so good and certain is that there’s a village helping that baby learn how to walk.”

Such strong support for K+M didn’t appear out of thin air, of course; it was fostered with a purpose. For Mo, setting up shop anywhere must be done with great awareness and intentionality of the surrounding community. She has developed a deep love for Highland Park and has always aimed to give back to the community.

“I fully believe that businesses can come into a neighborhood and be like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do good by this community.’ But I also fully believe that a lot of them did not do that and don’t give a sh-t. They see no humanity in anyone here. They just see dollar signs.”

Until the very end, Mo will continue to put her community first. “If I cannot uphold my value system in the way I run this, then I don’t want to run it,” she says.

Mo would love to return to seven-days-a-week service eventually, but no matter what transpires, she’ll never see the Long Weekend project as a waste. Mo is steadfast in her commitment to trying everything she can without compromising her values.

This article originally appeared in the August + September 2025 issue of Barista Magazine. Read more of the issue online here for free.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melina Devoney (she/her) is a barista and freelance writer in Los Angeles zeroed in on coffee and agriculture. She aims to amplify the voices of farmers and a diversity of perspectives within the coffee industry, and she’s happiest when running on wooded trails and dancing at concerts.

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