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View Winners → Business Profile: TAZA Coffee
Arcadia Weekly Jun 04, 2015
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-Photo by Amelia Favela
By Amelia Favela
Community-Focused Café Offers Social Atmosphere, High-Quality Coffee
Taza is a social coffee house located in the heart of Arcadia. Founder and current owner Sonny Mediana established the community-focused company in 2012 with the goal of creating a casual social atmosphere for community members who appreciate high-quality coffee.
Owner Sonny Mediana
-Photo by Amelia Favela
The Top 40 music, free Wi-Fi, and plenty of seating create the perfect ambiance for visitors to enjoy their coffee either individually or with a group of friends.
Not only does the coffee house brew their own specialty Taza brand, but the multiroaster coffee house also offers the highest quality of coffee and tea from around the United States.
-Photo by Amelia Favela
Taza is one of the first Southern California coffee houses to carry the delicious coffee bean brand Blue Bottle. Along with coffee, Taza also carries tasty pastries and desserts including macarons, Gato ice cream, cookies by Dolly, Belgian waffles, which are imported straight from Belgium, and Donut Snob, one of the top donut suppliers in the U.S.
Prior to becoming the proud owner of Taza, Mediana served as an executive creative director at Walt Disney Studios for 10 years. After surviving the life-threatening experience of a stroke, Mediana decided it was time to pursue his longtime dream of opening a coffee house.
“After you have a life-changing experience, you realize it’s not always about your career and money, it’s really about doing something you love and enjoy,” said the owner.
-Photo by Amelia Favela
Since moving forward with his passion to open a coffee shop, Mediana continues to gain recognition for his specialty café, being deemed “Best Coffee Shop in Arcadia” by LA Weekly, and one of the top 12 coffee shops in Los Angeles by Thrill List.
Taza customers, who are typically young adults, can be confident that the coffee beans they’re sipping come from a reputable source. Mediana makes every effort to purchase products from respectable farms that only practice fair trade. Although it may sometimes be a challenge to cover the costs, the owner is a strong believer of quality over quantity and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Along with the core value of having quality products, Taza also makes it a point to have exceptional customer service.
-Photo by Amelia Favela
“Every employee is a part of the reason customers come back, we build a relationship with them,” said Mediana.
This method of building a bond with customers has proven to be successful, considering that on a daily basis nearly 60 percent of customers are regulars and 40 percent are new, Mediana estimated.
One of the major goals for Taza is to offer more in-house pastries and desserts. Meaning that aside from carrying high-quality treats from outside sources, Taza will produce their very own. Ultimately, the café will continue to offer premium quality coffee and pastry-related products to customers who want more than just the average cup of joe.
“Coffee is like the new wine. … When people are ready to explore it, they come here,” said Mediana.
Contact Taza at (626) 538-CAFÉ, via email info@Tazacoffee.com, or visit them at 11 W. Huntington Drive in Arcadia, www.Tazacoffee.com.
