Kindness & Mischief Coffee Wants to Kickstart Itself Into Highland Park

Hey, you live in Highland Park. Everyone lives in Highland Park by now, right? Well, you might have noticed that, at least along Figueroa, there’s a surprising lack of specialty coffee (well, except for The Highland Cafe and Cafe de Leche over on nearby York, plus the incoming Intelligentsia on Figueroa). Kindness & Mischief wants to change that, and they want you to help.

It’s a Kickstarter tale as old as time: local person has idea, wants to make said idea happen, enlists the world to consider paying part of the cost. This iteration, Kindness & Mischief, is billing itself as a "people-driven, quality-obsessed, community-centered specialty coffee shop," complete with arts and crafts events, community nights and the occasional open mic.

To make this Highland Park dream a reality, owner Mo Maravilla is looking for $30,000 in cold hard cash, which will be put towards finishing the coffee bar, swapping the signage out front (it currently says JEWELRY) and buying an espresso machine, plus the basics like electric rewiring and plumbing. So basically, everything.

What do you get for your hard-earned donation cash? $15 nets a sticker, $25 lands said sticker, a tote bag, and a free coffee. From there, a $75 option means a month of free coffee, $200 gets your name on a brick somewhere, and for the serious spender $5,000 earns a week in L.A. (expenses included, which is nice) trying coffee and riding around on bikes.

Currently the Kickstarter is about 2/3rds funded, but should one be so inclined to chip in, the final date to submit a donation is only 8 days away. It should be noted that, at least within the framework of their Kickstarter video, Kindness & Mischief seems to have at least spoken with some members of the community on whether or not the upscale coffee bar would be a welcome addition to the close-knit community. That’s more than anyone can say for a lot of the projects popping up over there.

Feel like dropping a couple of bucks? Do so here.

Kindness & Mischief Coffee
5537 N. Figueroa Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90042