La La Land Kind Café

Start with the Banana Cloud Latte

The Banana Cloud Latte is the drink this café gets ordered for, built around a banana foam, and it is the one to take if only one drink is coming to the table. Lavender Bloom completes the named signature pair, and matcha is the other essential lane, with a long matcha and tea list behind it.

Espresso drinks are customised rather than fixed, so an order here is closer to a specification than a menu choice. The retail coffee carries its own names, Magic, Diner, Nirvana, Heaven and Wired, but what people come for are the signature drinks rather than the origin cards.

Kindness as the business model

La La Land Kind Café describes itself as more than a coffee shop, and the substance behind that line is its hiring: the company employs young people coming out of foster care, and the mission of spreading kindness while serving coffee and treats is the reason the brand exists rather than something added afterwards.

It started in Dallas in 2019 and reached Nashville in the summer of 2025, with the 12 South branch as the local expression of the same idea. Founder Francois Reihani built the model around that employment programme from the beginning.

All white with pops of yellow

The room is bright, playful and deliberately designed: all white with pops of yellow, and the brand describes every detail as intentional from the moment guests walk in. Guests describe it in much the same terms, a sunny, soft-coloured space that lifts the mood.

The opening drew lines around the block and waits of up to two hours for the specialty drinks, which says as much about the pull of the brand as about the coffee. The counter-service format works either way, for a quick order or for sitting a while with a matcha.