Milan Blagojevic and Liudmyla Zaletska, natives of Serbia and Ukraine, respectively, had always dreamt of opening their own coffee shop after moving to New York in 2015, where they worked bartending at the award-winning speakeasy Employees Only. "I had a background in coffee since I was 18, but New York really opened our eyes to a specialty coffee industry,” Blagojevic tells New Times .

In 2017, when Employees Only announced it was opening a Miami Beach outpost at the Washington Park Hotel, Blagojevic and Zaletska, who are both partners in business and in life, jumped at the opportunity to move to the Sunshine State to help with the expansion. The bar shuttered a year later, but Blagojevic and Zaletska stayed put, working hard for the next few years to save up to open their own business

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