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In early January, Sydney Wayser and Isaac Watters—partners in both business and life—opened one of Los Angeles’s buzziest new coffee shops, Granada. What makes Granada so unconventional is the fact that it’s located on the lower level of their actual home, a situation enabled by LA County’s relatively new Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (also known as MEHKO) permit. The permit allows Wayser and Watters to legally serve coffee and food out of their house, with limitations on the number of staff and total annual earnings. In their Angelino Heights backyard, eager visitors sip cortados and eat pastries sourced from baker Sasha Piligian—and it’s been a quick hit. Here, Wayser explains how she and Watters make the setup work.
On opening the cafe
[We were] feeling isolated for so long, post-COVID, and then we had a daughter right after. There was a big chunk of time when we felt we were really missing community and we watched some of our favorite bars, restaurants, and coffee shops close. When we heard about the MEHKO permit, it felt like maybe we could make a community space. Having someone come over and have tea and a pastry in your house—that’s the coziest entry point to community space.
It’s about bringing people together and sharing art, ideas, and culture, like the older idea of a salon—to get together and to be people, not even in a networking capacity. My husband and I were feeling this so strongly, but everyone that walks in the door is feeling it, and they’re just like, I’ve been looking for this.
On creative and life partnership
I’m a musician and Isaac is as well. He also works in film and TV in set design, production design, and architecture. We do some interior design together; we built and designed our house that we live in. We’ve been a creative couple, collaborating since we started dating to being married to having a child, so [Granada] feels like another version of the same thing.
On operating out of a home
When we designed our [house], we knew we wanted to have parties and events here, so we designed it—not knowing then—to be a perfect coffee shop, with a big, open floor plan and indoor-outdoor space with the garden. We made the public space downstairs, private space upstairs.
But this is the house that we live in; the big thing that we have to do all the time is clean and maintain it so that it’s ready for people to come in. We have a 3-year-old, so she comes home after the coffee shop closes, runs around the house, and makes a pillow fort out of all the cushions on the sofa. We reset it in the morning before anyone comes in. Our hours are limited: When we decided to do this, we felt that if we’re going to share our home, we need to do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt our family time, so we’re only open when our daughter’s at school.
On managing disagreements
We agree most of the time and disagree sometimes, too, but we manage to really talk through [disagreements] and be mindful of each other. We try to lean into the idea that there’s no wrong answer; it’s just picking an avenue of how we want to proceed. It’s finding compromise and being open about feelings in the process.
We love and respect each other so much that if I were to say “Let’s do this” and Isaac said “I don’t know about that,” I would also feel like, Well, I really like his ideas, so I’m sure what he’s saying is [right, too]. We both feel seen by the other person and like we can do what we think we are good at. Isaac gets to shine in some things, and I get to shine in others, and then together, we make a strong team.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
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