Found Coffee

Annie Choi edited television in post-production — Project Runway, The Real World — before walking into Demitasse Coffee Roasters as an intern and making general manager of their Santa Monica shop in four months. She opened Found in Eagle Rock in February 2015, in a neighborhood with no specialty coffee shop of its own, and built it to run on relationships instead of turnover: a place where people gather and are known.

• A casual work session
• Meeting a friend
• Tasting different roasters

Rotating roasters

Found has never had a house roaster. It's run as a multi-roaster bar since 2015, currently pouring Demitasse, Stereoscope, and Prospect Coffee Roasters after an eight-year partnership with Peri Coffee that ended at the end of 2022. Espresso and single-origin pour-over both rotate with whichever roaster is on deck.

A community-minded multi-roaster spotlighting strong California roasters like Stereoscope and Demitasse, with a rotating international Travel Series.

Steady bar work and a lineup that actually rotates, most of it California roasters Choi chose herself.

Choi built the room herself out of a 1,108-square-foot storefront in a 1920s auto body shop, aiming for what she called vintage plus modern: white walls, light gray counters, medium wood shelving, and a dahlia-yellow La Marzocco GB5 anchoring the bar. The chairs are peacock green metal, most of the small stuff on shelves is thrifted, and the point was that nothing in the room looks bought new — it looks found. Floor-to-ceiling storefront windows keep the long rectangle bright most of the day, and the walls double as rotating space for California artists.

• vintage plus modern
• thrifted decor
• industrial storefront
• exposed wood
• art gallery walls