Hidden Gems: Meet Max Rand of Good Friend Coffee

Today we’d like to introduce you to Max Rand

Hi Max, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have been in the coffee industry for about 10 years now. I was introduced to coffee in Denton, Texas where I went to college. Denton had 4-5 really good shops so I would bounce around to different shops in between classes or to do homework. I eventually became a barista my junior year of college and never looked back.

After I graduated college in 2017, all I wanted to do was focus on coffee. I moved to LA with my girlfriend (now my wife) and my dog and started applying to every coffee shop I could find. I ended up at Alfred Coffee on Melrose Place. If you’ve ever been to this specific Alfred you know that it was insanely busy, and at the time was a hub for celebrities to get coffee as they shopped the designer stores that surrounded the shop. At Alfred I was able to grow into the coffee professional I am today. I ended up staying there all the way to 2022, up until my daughter was born.

After my daughter was born, I was determined to start my own thing. Every time we put her down for a nap I would pull out my computer and work on my business plan, search for a location, work on my menu, or basically anything else to move along in the process. By the time she was 1 I was able to have a plan, secure a space, and initiate the build process.

For the buildout we partnered with Klein Agency, who at the time had just wrapped up their project with Canyon Coffee. We went through multiple iterations of the layout, color schemes, materials, etc, until we finally felt like we had it figured out. The buildout took about a year and a half including an 8 month period having to do a change of use permit for the space.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The two main obstacles we faced were time and money. Like I mentioned above, we had to submit a change of use permit for the space. There was a lot of seemingly unnecessary back and forth on whether we’d even be able to change the permitting of the space. We had to hire an outside person to dig up some old records that showed that the space was previously coded as a restaurant back in the 50s. This process took 8 months, which obviously took a big hit to our budget and timeline.

Due to this delay we ended up going way over our initial budget, but thanks to some investors seeing our vision, and trusting me, we were able to finish the buildout and get the shop open.

As you know, we’re big fans of Good Friend Coffee. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We have now been open about 5 months after receiving a warm welcome from the Virgil Village neighborhood. A lot of our customers shared their appreciation for us being there, saying that the neighborhood needed a community type watering hole for people to meet, get some work done, and enjoy good coffee. We’ve put just as much thought into how the shop makes people feel as we do for the coffee. We strive to be a welcoming environment for everyone. We hope that Good Friend can live up to its name, and be a good neighbor and function as a hub for the community as Virgil Village continues to grow and develop.

On the drinks side, we are a multi-roaster coffee shop featuring coffee roasters from all over the world, and matcha from Rocky’s Matcha. We specialize in using naturally processed coffees and crafting what we like to call ‘Fun Little Drinks’. Our most popular drink has been the PB&J latte, which consists of a blueberry puree, house-made peanut butter syrup, espresso, and topped with flaky salt. Some other options that are special to us are The Good Friend, which is our take on the classic cream top, the Yuzu Cold Coffee, and a Lychee Matcha Lemonade.

We are always featuring 2-3 different coffee roasters at a time so every time you come in you can experience something different. We always have our Best Friends Blend, a collaboration we did with our friends at Dayglow, as our main espresso option, but then we’ll feature a couple single origin options for our drip coffee, cold coffee, and second espresso option.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Opening a coffee shop in Los Angeles hahaha

Contact Info:

• Website: https://goodfriendcoffee.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/goodfriend.la

Image Credits
Melody Rand