Watch: Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen owner tackles challenges, embraces community

Ajay Relan, a founder of the California beverage and food spaces, talks about the challenges of starting a business and the importance of community.

Ajay Relan is one of the founders of the famous Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen locations in California. From his successes, he has become an influential member of the Crenshaw area. TheGrio caught up with Relan and he talked about the challenges of starting a company from scratch and what he sees as Hilltop’s role in the community.

The following is a transcript of that conversation.

Relan: [00:00:00] You know, as people of color in general, we just face so many hurdles even getting to the starting point. We wouldn’t be here without the community. I think the reason why we exist is for this community. And I think we, from early on, we wanted to be known why we were here and who we were trying to serve, and understanding the incumbent community that has been here for decades and just bringing a higher quality offering to the area that complements everything that’s already here. But everything that we do is rooted in this idea of community and connectivity. We do our best to hire from the community. We feel really good about, you know, our efforts to teach leadership and entrepreneurship to entry-level employment. And then when we think about the entrepreneurs, the creative, the community organizers that kind of come here, our dream was just to create a space where people can kind of connect and build on those ideas. And, you know, we play a small part in their journeys, in their clients. It’s really just a conduit for connectivity. It’s a way for people to come together and have conversations that transcend their own situations and experiences in their own lives. And, you know, we really pride ourselves in the variety of uses of our space. It’s been amazing to open our space for art events and live music.

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