Rising Stars: Meet Vyas Bishop

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vyas Bishop.

Hi Vyas, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My roots are in Hawaii, I’ve been in LA now for the past 14 years (most of which has been in Venice Beach). Initially, I was going to school with a track to become an internal medicine doctor. During what was supposed to be a short interval gap year of traveling I spent about 18 months in Italy, Vietnam and Mexico doing live/work exchanges on farms, orchards & vineyards. During the Italy trip, I spent months learning cooking & scaled old-school farming techniques from an Italian family in the mountains east of Napoli(a mountain town called Montefalcone). This completely changed by world: I knew I had to alter my entire life plan.

I returned to LA and started working with what was then only a singular restaurant that would become a well-known group(all their spots start with Gj…) and ended up working my way starting as a food runner/busser to ultimately general manager. Ultimately like most things, Covid lockdown in LA altered most people’s lives and I ended up leaving the group after working with them for eight years. Some really heavy soul-searching & sunbathing with my dogs ended up with a spur of the moment afternoon coffee encounter to the team I work with now as Director of Operations.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I always find it hard to say if it has been easy or difficult: Many of the things that occurred in my youth that I coined as bad luck or misfortune I regularly see now as helpful that it happened. I come from a large family raised on low income that on paper that defined us as poor on the socioeconomic ladder. My father passed away when I was 12 years old suddenly from a heart attack and that made things very difficult finding my path through life for the initial ten years after. We slipped beneath the poverty line, my mother having to scrape by and we ate from the food bank for a few years. I can remember the few times we were able to afford to go out to eat and how much of a treat it was. I think that memory stays deep inside of me with what I do now: there’s a deep set place of excitement and enjoyment that always leaps out of me.

Covid really put me on pause and I almost left the hospitality industry after what I experienced not only in the collapse of what we knew as the restaurant business but also the speed in which people coming to eat lost appreciation coming back from lockdown(s). I think life matches many things with how we interact with our food: overindulging something makes it seem less special. With what I have been able to bring to the three different businesses I run now has rekindled a hope inside me that made me re-fall in love with what I do in spite of what seems to be endless hurdles. In the end, the hurdles I encounter are minuscule in comparison to what was thrown at me at a young age.

I think the hospitality industry is a life-defining moment for many people who encounter it: if you aren’t head over heels in love with it, it’ll chew you up and spit you out with less belief in humanity.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I direct a group of establishments that all center around the concept of entertainment.

One of the businesses is a multi-location coffee shop chain that focuses on a Vinyl record & ethnically sourced coffee bean program. We curate a large rotating record collection that plays alongside professionally trained baristas creating drinks like the E&T (an espresso-based non-alcoholic version of a G&T).

The next business is a multi-level historic bar that offers live music programming 6 nights a week in its underground level. The bar has been integral to the breakout of many well-known artists today and offers seasonal based cocktails in addition to the music. The program is curated heavily to be all-inclusive and ranges from live music to drag shows to local celebrity DJs on the weekends.

The final business is a massive farm to table southern-inspired restaurant located on the edge of West LA. Most recently, it won a Michelin star which broke the barrier of stars being given out on the west side only to classical French establishments. The food program revolves around whatever is in peak season and hinges upon direct relationships with farmers, fisherman and wild game hunters from CA->TX.

My job is to guide and promote creativity at each location. I think the single fact I am most proud of is that the people who work with me genuinely enjoy coming to work and that energy is always contagious. People come to these businesses and legitimately remark at how nice it is to see staff smiling and enjoying themselves.

The question constantly being asked every day not only by me to my teams but also back to me: are we putting out something that is truly good and did we give everything we had to make it so?

Oh and I run a pan-asian food & clothing pop-up with my older sister called Hapa where we throw events in West LA.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I think there are some wild changes coming to what we do on a regular basis in terms of accessibility. Things like Spotify, Doordash, Amazon have begun the change of expectation in the generation moving into the workforce. I don’t see what could come as negative though: I see a 19 yr old kid come into our coffee shop and hear Doja Cat on a vinyl record and see their eyes light up. I think that moment of hearing how elemental the sound of a needle on vinyl makes one feel speaks to a deeper human desire for tangible experiences. This same desire makes me feel hopeful for what is to come when people become more used to listening to music on Spotify or ordering fried chicken on Doordash and then get to experience a drum kit live or eat super crispy fried chicken made with love piping hot.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @hapa.venice

Image Credits
Ashley Randall Photography