Why We Opened Next Door to Mocha Joe's
People ask us all the time: “Why did you open a coffee shop right next to another coffee shop?” It's a fair question. On the surface, it seems like terrible business strategy. Why compete directly with an established café when you could set up across town in a nice, uncontested location? The answer is simple, and it starts with a cup of coffee that was barely room temperature.
The Coffee Was Cold
Larry David had been a loyal customer at Mocha Joe's for years. Every morning, he'd walk in, order a drip coffee, sit at his usual table, and try to enjoy his morning. The operative word being “try.”
Because the coffee was never hot. Not once. Not on a Monday, not on a Friday, not during a heat wave when the ambient air temperature along Beverly Blvd should have kept it warm by sheer proximity to the sun. It was always, without exception, lukewarm — that sad, tepid purgatory between “acceptably warm” and “just drink it cold at that point.”
Larry mentioned this. Politely at first. Then less politely. Then with the kind of focused intensity that only Larry David can muster when confronting a fundamental injustice in the Beverly Grove neighborhood.
The Tables Wobbled
If the coffee situation were an isolated incident, perhaps Larry could have made peace with it. But Mocha Joe's had a second, equally offensive problem: every single table wobbled. Not just a little shimmy. Full tilt. You'd set your cup down and watch it begin its slow, inevitable migration toward the edge.
Larry tried everything. He folded napkins and wedged them under table legs. He repurposed sugar packets as makeshift shims. He once — and this is documented — brought a carpenter's level from home to prove that the floor wasn't the problem. The tables were. All of them. Read more about this crisis in our post on wobbly tables as a public health crisis.
The Moist Scones
And then there were the scones. A scone, by definition, should be dry. It should crumble. It should require a sip of coffee between bites because that's the whole point — the coffee and the scone work together. But Mocha Joe's scones were moist. Damp, even. Like someone had left them uncovered in the West Hollywood humidity next to a running shower.
When Larry brought this up, Mocha Joe said — and we quote — “Most people like moist scones.” Most people. As if the majority opinion on scone moisture levels somehow negates the objective superiority of a dry, crumbly texture. We have since published The Extra Dry Scone Manifesto on this very subject.
The Ban
The culmination of months of feedback — constructive, passionate, increasingly animated feedback — was a ban. Mocha Joe banned Larry David from his coffee shop. A paying customer, banned for caring too much about quality. It was, in Larry's words, “the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened to me, and I once got into a fight with a Boy Scout troop.”
The Decision
What Mocha Joe didn't realize is that banning Larry David doesn't make Larry David go away. It makes Larry David open a competing business six feet from your front door on Beverly Blvd in the heart of the Beverly Grove neighborhood. The lease was signed within a week. The build-out took three months. And when Latte Larry's opened, there was a sign in the window that said, simply: “Our coffee is hot.”
Some people call it a spite store. We prefer “motivation-driven entrepreneurship.” Because here's the thing about spite as a business strategy: it works. When your primary motivation is to be demonstrably, undeniably, measurably better than the person next door, every decision gets filtered through a lens of excellence.
The coffee is hot because we check the temperature. The tables don't wobble because we engineered them not to. The scones are dry because moisture is the enemy and we treat it as such. Whether you're strolling over from The Grove mall or cutting through from the Fairfax District, you'll taste the difference.
Is spite a sustainable business model? Come visit us on Beverly Blvd and decide for yourself. We're the one with the periscope. Right next to Mocha Joe's. You can't miss us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Latte Larry's really next door to Mocha Joe's?
Yes. Six feet away on Beverly Blvd in Beverly Grove. You can see their sign from our window. We installed a periscope for exactly this purpose.
What makes your coffee hotter than other LA coffee shops?
We serve every cup at a verified 180°F. Every single one. We check. Check our full menu to see what we offer.
Can I visit and see the rivalry in person?
Absolutely. Contact us or just walk in — we're on Beverly Blvd near The Grove in the Beverly Grove neighborhood of Los Angeles.