My guest today is Sonam Parikh, one of the co-founders of Mina’s World, a coffee shop in West Philadelphia. Sonam and their partner, Kate, opened Mina’s World 18 days before COVID-19 forced the majority of hospitality businesses to close or completely revamp how they serve food and drinks to customers.
I first reached out to Sonam because I noticed two distinctive things about Mina’s World’s Instagram page: One, many of the staff members appeared in photos over and over again; and two, baristas were often named in posts. Those seem like small details, but they felt telling, and like a rare acknowledgment that the folks who work within the space are the ones who make it special.
After I hit “stop record” on this episode, I told Sonam that I thought we’d be friends if we met in real life, and it’s because this interview really took on a life of its own and organically unfolded into a beautiful conversation. We talked about honest representations in media, saying “I don’t know” and really meaning it, and bringing in a mediator to understand the needs of your staff. Don’t miss a minute, because every word Sonam speaks is important and necessary to hear. Here’s Sonam:
Ashley: So I'm going to start where I start all of my interviews by having you introduce yourself.
Sonam: Okay. Well, hi, my name is Sonam. I am one half of the founders of Mina's World, which is a cafe located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Ashley: Can you tell me about some of your first memories of coffee? Did you grow up with coffee in your life?
Sonam: No. I grew up with chai. Chai was foundational. Every morning you would wake up to the smell of the chai breaking—the tea and the milk on the stove rising up. You could smell it in the air, all of the spices. That's what I grew up on, but on very, very special occasions, my mom would sometimes make coffee, and the coffee was very Indian-style and she would cook it in a pot, like a sauté pan or a boiler pan.
It was just the most decadent, delicious thing I've ever tried in my life. The first time I ever had it—I think I had a sip of hers—I was obsessed with it. Ever since, the taste of coffee has just been this extreme delight for me.
Ashley: You grew up in Brooklyn, right?
Sonam: Yup. Born and raised.
Ashley: Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, because I was reading that they owned a bodega in Brooklyn—I have to imagine that influenced what Mina's World, maybe, doesn't look like, but maybe some of the values of your parents' business really shaped what your coffee shop looks like now?
Sonam: Yeah, definitely.
My dad used to tell my mom and me, ‘You can never turn away the first or last customer of the day.”
It's somehow carried over into the shop, and it's so cute because our shift lead, Van, the other day, it was like 4:05 or something, when we close at 4 every day. There was a straggler, and I saw the two baristas kind of look at each other and be like, “Do we take this customer? Do we not?”
I was in the back, and it's completely up to their discretion if they take the customer or not, because the floor is theirs. Van was just like, “It's the last customer. We can't just say no.” And it was just so cute to see this thing that was passed down from my dad in Mina's World. That was very sweet.
Ashley: What was it like growing up around the bodega?
Sonam: It was really interesting. Brooklyn in the ’90s is really different from Brooklyn today. My family and I got gentrified out earlier, and the Brooklyn of that time is like a very golden period that I miss and love so much. I have a lot of memories of sitting on gigantic bags of cat food and watching my parents just be in this shop.
And it was a very stereotypical bodega with cigarettes in the back-end and a lot of canned food collecting dust that nobody bought and diapers and just like a strange assortment of things that everybody in a neighborhood would need strung together. It was extremely tidy, but just always looked messy because it was so small, you know?
It was called S&K Food Center because—I don't actually know why it was called that. I don't think that my parents really serve food there, but it was on Third Avenue in Brooklyn. I remember like very, very vaguely some of their customers coming in and taking me for walks.
Like, things are really different in the ’90s. You just gave your kid away, I guess. But like, yeah, it was the corner store that everybody kinda went to. And that's how they like came to America and tried to eke out a living.
Ashley: Did you have regulars then? I assume you must have since people would just, you know, take you on walks.
Sonam: Yeah. I think that they must have had them. A lot of the details that I have from that time are passed down through storytelling. I was really, really young, but even to this day, like my mom will get a phone call and be like, “Sonam, this person from the store who used to take you on walks just said hi.”
Yeah, I'm guessing there were quite a few regulars.
Ashley: I don't think I've ever talked about bodegas on the podcast at all. I used to live in Brooklyn back in 2009 to 2015, and I think sometimes I assume that people know what a bodega is because I think when you live in New York sometimes you assume it’s the center of the universe.
But hearing you describe them reminded me that perhaps not everybody knows what a bodega is—and not to say that we need to go into too many details, but it really is a store where you can get almost everything you need but in a very, very, very small, tight, contained place.
And especially in neighborhoods where there might be food deserts or it might be really hard to get to a grocery store—especially in New York if it's not walkable, it's pretty much not accessible—the bodega really becomes like a center of life in a way.
Sonam: Oh yeah, absolutely. I feel that was how my parents explained it to me in a lot of ways.
I think that's how a café can be, too. Where you sort of feel the rhythm of the people around you through your regulars, through the changes in humidity that caused you to adjust the grind, even through the people who come and buy their pack of cigarettes and the newspaper in the morning, through the kook who needs to like, get like seven bags of cat food every Thursday…
It just, I don't know. There's something really stabilizing and sweet about it.
Ashley: I like that you mentioned that analogy to adjusting the grind and coffee based on the weather, because it feels like the bodega and the coffee shop are reflections of the neighborhood in a very concrete way in that people come in and out, but that they're also reflections of your neighborhood in this very abstract way: of the weather, of what the vibe is outside, what's happening out on the street or around the corner comes and floods this space of community and gathering.
It's a reflection that is very tangible, but also intangible.
Sonam: That is such a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is such a great point.
Ashley: I mean, you made it, I just talked about it.
Sonam: It's funny because all of the baristas at Mina’s will look out the window and be like, “Ah, yes, it's going to rain. It's going to be slow.” We ourselves have become forecasters of the neighborhood through what we know about things like the weather and the news and whatever it is that's going on in the world and relating it to what we know, which is the coffee in the shop and what we offer. In its own way, it's like this little magic that I love.
Ashley: Yeah!
What prompted you to want to open a coffee shop?
Sonam: You know, people ask me this all the time—and I do love coffee. I love coffee, but I think it's because I love serving people. I love the hospitality aspect of it. What made me want to open a coffee shop is because I grew up at my parents’ shop. As soon as I turned 15 or so I became a barista and I've been that ever since.
My dad always used to tell me, “Please don’t open a shop, please just go to school. Please just become an accountant, a pilot, anything, just don't make yourself have to open a store. It's not worth it. Don't do it.”
Lo and behold, it's exactly what I ended up doing. And I don't know why. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my dad has passed and it's my way of connecting with him, or maybe it has to do with the fact that it's what feels most natural and correct for me. Um, I'm not really sure.
I still can't tell you what possessed me to do this, but it feels very correct for me.
Ashley: I love that it's ineffable in a way, because, you know, I mean—I ask questions. This is a podcast. The idea is that I ask questions and you give answers, but not every question has an answer.
Sonam: Yeah. There's so much power in, “I don't know.”
Ashley: Did you always feel comfortable saying that when people asked you that question?
Sonam: Absolutely not. I think this could be one of the first times I've ever explained it like that. I've also honestly taken a lot of time off from doing any interviews. This is the first one I've done in at least six or eight months.
That's also something I just noticed about myself: that I have been really reluctant to do interviews and I've also been really uncomfortable to say, “I don't know,” but just the other day, I was able to vocalize “I don't know” is an answer.
Ashley: Yeah. “I don't know” is an answer.
It's a really valid answer because it gives space for people to—I don't know, keep thinking.
Sonam: Absolutely.
Ashley: That's something I've had to learn doing this podcast, too. That it's okay for me to not—I mean, I started this podcast thinking I was a fucking expert at everything. I'm not, as I quickly learned.
Part of that process is being able to say, “I don't know the answer,” and being gracious enough to say, “I need to ask a question. I don't need to assume what the answer is here.”
So let's talk about your reluctance to do interviews because we talked—I'm going to say the thing that I hate saying on the podcast—but we talked a little bit about that before we started recording.
When I do these interviews, there's always a very different level of how much a thing has been covered. And Mina's World has been covered a lot in a lot of really big publications. Like you've been in Healthyish by Bon Appétit. You've been in Eater…
There are a lot of really amazing quotes and things that I gleaned from these interviews—I'm actually kind of surprised that you were able to get those things in, because I think it's really easy to kind of just like make these articles as bland as possible—but I wonder for you, as you mentioned kind of feeling this double-edged sword with these interviews, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the attention that Mina’s World has gotten and how it makes you feel.
Sonam: Yeah. I would love to.
The first thing I really want to say is that attention has never, ever equated to financial success for us. And that would be the hope through doing these interviews. That is what we are promised. When we are asked to do these things, we are told, “This will help your business.” And so that is the hope for us.
For me specifically, the hope is that my business grows so that I can pay my baristas more. That is always going to be my first goal. When I do a bunch of these overexposing interviews and my bottom line, which is making more money, does not get met, it makes me pause and question, “What is the point of these interviews then?”
Then it makes me circle back around to this idea that these interviews aren't for my benefit, it is for the benefit of whoever is presenting the interview. It's something that Mina's World is always involved in the discussion of, which is tokenization. Are we being tokenized or are we being highlighted or are we being glamorized or like, do people actually think our coffee is good or do they just want to stick our faces on stuff?
That's become a question that all of us, as a team, talk about a lot, and that I think about constantly. And part of that is why I've really backed off on doing interviews because I've just become really wary of being a talking head about something and receiving no productivity from it, for the things that really matter to me.
And what really, really, really matters to me is being able to give my staff enough money, that they can just chill and enjoy life and go make art and go on a vacation and not have to worry about a second job or getting a very frivolous tattoo. They should all be able to do that whenever they want to. My bottom line is getting that money in their pockets.
And when people are like so obsessed with the things that make us different as a team and wanting to highlight that, it makes us all feel tokenized and alienated, you know?
Ashley: Right. That's a really good point. Because it's, as you were saying before, we started recording, it's like, “When are you interviewing us? Are you interviewing us for Pride month? Are you interviewing us because you're doing like…”—even in one of these articles, the designation is “Queer Table.”
Sonam: Yup.
Ashley: And then even in the first sentence you say, “Not just the gay best,” and it's like, “What's happening here?” This article feels contradictory.
But then you are promised those things of like, “This will be great for your cafe. It'll get you exposure.” How often does that actually translate to anything? Like did this article come out and suddenly you had like 30 people out the door?
Sonam: No, that's never happened.
Ashley: Yeah. So like, why does it matter? It seems like it takes away from the things that do actually work, which I imagined for Mina’s World is a lot of community presence and investing in the people around you.
Sonam: Yeah, it's a lot about maintaining our community fridge, keeping the shop clean, trying to make sure we stay on top of all of our scheduled raises and orders and trying to make sure we keep cups and sleeves in the shop because of the supply chain, which has been enormously funny and sad through the last three years.
A running joke in the shop is just about the supply chain in general. And yeah, those things are just more pressing to me now because I understand that people want—I think that a lot of people with media power want to showcase what they know about diversity but they don't necessarily want to invest in it and see it get furthered.
You know, all of these publications, if you really want to see us go farther, if you want to keep seeing us on your pages, maybe something you can do is, after you do your interview, make a huge order at Mina's World, a shipping order, and get coffee beans for your team for the rest of the month.
There needs to be some sort of return because I really cannot eat views and neither can any of my teammates.
Ashley: Right. It seems like there's no, there's no return for you in a way that is tangible to your business actually surviving, even though that's the promise of these articles—that exposure will get you more people through the door.
And then at the same time, I think that there's this strive in these articles to present you guys as perfect. Like, “Look, they're queer or they're BIPOC-owned and they're doing it! They're crushing it.”
There's this very, like, almost rainbow-washing positivity that’s spun on this, and something that I'm really getting from you and this interview is that shit is not perfect. It is hard, and you don't always have the answers. And very rarely do I see that tension dictated in any of these articles because there seems to be this overwhelming need to present issues of diversity or people that are being highlighted because they're quote unquote “diverse” as a very positive, great, like happy-go-lucky, spin, if that makes sense.
Sonam: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, it's funny because my candor is the same in those articles and this interview. I'm very much the same person across the board. What comes across in an interview is always what the interviewer gleans from me or whatever their objective for the article or what bylines they need.
It's really all about them, you know? And that's fine. I understand that, I've signed up to do it. So I'm part of this equation and stuff, but I think the thing that I've learned over the last two years with Mina's World is really getting a harsh understanding of why people contact us—and it's never really because they really believe in us. It's because there are certain times of year where you have to find certain kinds of people to fill your pages so that you can check off some boxes.
All I'm saying is that if you need to check off those boxes, attach a price tag because it's shitty. And the irony of being like, “Wow, look at this one place that's still standing!” is that like you have these institutions, and you have no idea how hard it is to stay standing when there's no financial support from the places that laud them as such great places.
Ashley: Yeah.
Sonam: And the other irony is that they're not such great places!
How can a two-year-old business run by an idiot like me ever be an ideal café? I'm still learning, right? I've never gone to café school. I’ve been given the power to manage somebody else's café. I've never even been a shift leader at somebody else's café. I was always told I was too passionate or too this or too that, or too whatever.
I've never even been given the keys to anybody else's shop, you know? So it's just like the idea that I'm so qualified to be this diversity angel or something is hilarious to me, because I've never, at this point, to be honest, I've only run an operating, open café for 18 days. I've never even had an open cafe. It’s incredibly strange.
Ashley: I think there's something that happens when people talk about something totally new and different that they haven't heard before people do—something totally new and different where there's an expectation and almost a mythologizing that you're going to do this exactly right.
But that does a disservice to you, the person behind it, when you're like, “I'm still learning and there's so many lessons for me to take in. And I want to be told when I'm making a mistake.” I want to be told in an honest way that like, “Hey, maybe the thing that I'm doing is not x, y, and z. Let's work on making this better because that's how this becomes a better, more accountable place, is that we feel safe in expressing those concerns.”
But sometimes it feels like out of your control in a way. Because you're painted in the media and a certain light that like, you're beyond reproach, but that's not true. You don't want that to be true.
Sonam: It's not true. And I get reproached all the time and I'm so thankful for it and appreciative of it. The thing about my shop is that all of this press and media and like, whatever, it doesn't go beyond the window. Inside of the shop, the team and I are very real with one another.
We have a lot of talks about a lot of things and we all make group-based decisions. Like there was a very, very large media company—the largest—who did this big piece on us. One of the components of the piece involves somebody coming to the shop and this person messed up in every single way they could have.
And no matter how much this company paid us and how much exposure it did get the shop, as a shop, nobody was happy about it, and we're just not working with them again. We're not doing it again. It was not beyond reproach where they were like, “What are you doing?” you know—and it was a good learning experience.
Ashley: How do you cultivate a culture where people feel safe expressing these concerns?
You don't have to have it all figured out, but it seems like a pretty pivotal tenet for you. It’s that decisions aren't made by you just because you're one of the co-owners or they're not just made by Kate because she's one of the co-owners. It seems like decisions are made as a collective.
Sonam: Well, I don't have it all figured out, but what I do know is that I had to be called on that. Sharing power is something that my team and I discussed at length with a mediator. It's not for me or Kate wanting more power, but it is for me and Kate not understanding what power there is in being the co-owner of a café and understanding how to use that power effectively and also where to share that power.
Ashley: I love that you said that, because I think if there's anything I think about more than anything—what a clear sentence there, Ashley—but if there's anything I think a lot about, it’s power, and I want more people to think critically about power because it's insidious. Like you don't know you have it sometimes, and it will absolutely influence the decisions that you make.
I think people often paint bad leadership as like a bad apple, but power is a multiplier. Power will influence the way that you make decisions in ways that you often don't know. So what was that like having a mediator there and having to talk about things that maybe you hadn't realized?
Sonam: I think that in the beginning it was really scary because being told that you’re making any negative feelings occur in your workplace feels really, really bad. Of course there was a lot of self-blame, obviously, and shame in that, because there's always shame when you're told that you're doing something wrong, especially when you are a person who worked very, very hard and as a people-pleaser, and to your own detriment, to your own detriment in this situation.
But like, when you can sit with your shame, and sit with yourself and be accountable and be amenable to being accountable, and when you have as gracious and incredible of a team as we do at Mina's World, you will receive the space and understanding to rectify the ways in which you have not distributed power well enough and then get to do that, which is what we're doing right now.
And that can look like a lot of things. For us, it looks like working on equity and not just being everybody's gay café on the outside. Since I've stopped doing interviews and caring so much about the media, what I've instead turned to is actually internal repair fully—because I don't care anymore what everybody on the outside needs or wants to say about us.
But what I care deeply about is the internal harmony of my shop, and that the members of the shop feel safe and comfortable inside of there. I can't control what is going on outside or what people say about me, but I can control the literal temperature in my shop, emotional and otherwise. I can at least make people feel or create conditions that honor safety and boundaries.
And that's my job. Like that is literally all I am here to do for Mina’s World.
Ashley: One of the quotes that I was really interested in that made it into one of these articles—that I was surprised by—was trying to be as harmless as possible. And I think that sort of spoke to some of that—and I want to be clear that being harmless as possible doesn't mean, like, never making mistakes, but I think it means focusing on the circle that you occupy and not necessarily extending yourself outward and being bigger and doing big gestures to the detriment of the people that are closest to you. And it seems like you had a real reckoning with that.
Sonam: Yeah.
Ashley: Yeah. What has it been like to really turn inward and focus your attention more inward? Because I think that that's something that people forget—that like it starts, it starts literally by looking at the people next to you and saying, like, “How do I serve you better?”
Sonam: It's been the most gratifying and … full experience. I think that nobody ever … I don't know many people who have opened a business and then have had to completely—completely—reformat every single aspect of their business plan to be retrofitted to a pandemic and then survive it for years now.
I think one of the results of that is the external is so much less. There's not people in the shop except our team in the shop, laughing our asses off or being really quiet because everybody's having a bad day or listening to music or whatever it is that we do in there.
I was not seeing things with a clear lens when I started out. And I think why people do that, and why I did that, was because I was so full of good intentions. So full of good intentions. But one's intention does not always equal what their impact ends up being.
That's something I've really learned about. Through this process of reckoning, of being like, “I don't need to do these interviews. I don't need this attention because I don't know if it's positive for my shop or doing good things for my people.”
It was really helpful because—imagine building a building, but the base of it is built on popsicle sticks. How is that useful? You can't put bricks on popsicle sticks. It's going to teeter and totter and no matter how strong the top of it is, it's going to break. There's nothing to stand on.
And similarly, you have to build something that you can stand on. So no matter how long it takes, until our insides, until the team, until the shop itself, until our internal reserves feel full and sated, and our needs are met, I can't engage in messing around with the outside world right now.
I want so badly for my shop to feel fortified and to feel sufficient and strong. Those are all things that I take really seriously now, because I see that no matter what, a shop can only survive when there is strengthen your team, and strength comes from being able to rely on your managers and your bosses. Strength comes from when you have accountability within your team and when you all communicate with each other really, really well.
And that looks like actually liking where you work. And by liking where you work, I don't mean that we all have inappropriate boundaries with each other. It means that there's basic respect there and that everybody is accountable by being on time, your employers aren't inappropriate with you, that you get paid on time, that your raises come in every three months as they're supposed to, that you're not being cheated out of the things that you're owed and that your good hard work is acknowledged, and that when there's a problem on the team or you're feeling like you're not being treated properly, that is addressed immediately.
Having a people-based and a person-forward team is, I think, one of the most essential aspects to having a solid cafe. People ask all the time, “How come you don't have high turnover?” or like, some people will be like, “Wow, you really just have the same baristas.”
And it's like, yeah, why would I not? I really care about them—appropriately. I don't want to know about their personal lives. I don't want to be their friends. I will drive them to the hospital and cook the meals to the point of detriment when they are sick—whatever is appropriate in our relationship as we've discussed one-on-one during our meetings, and whatever is within our set of boundaries. Without that you can't have a shop that can be cute and be in magazines and be out there with like, little mugs and subscription boxes and stuff.
All of that stuff is really cute and fun and creates money, which is another necessity. But if you don't have a strong team, all of that is going to fold so fast and then your money is going to fall through the hole, too—we don't have any money, so we don't have anything to fall through, but I assume that's what’s going to happen.
Ashley: It's funny that you mentioned how important, how pivotal this is. And clearly this is something you're incredibly passionate about—I kind of like, hate using that word—but it's something that you feel really strongly about, but that doesn't come up in a single article that I read about you. It feels like people are sort of missing the point.
Sonam: Yeah. I think I'm realizing the point isn't me. The point isn't who I am or what I actually want from my business or something. I think the point is what the angle of the article is or what it's topically related to. Like, is it about being queer or is about Pride month, is it—I don't know.
Ashley: I feel like we talked a lot about big issues, but we also kind of just put the media out on blast, which I'm very into.
But I also think that this is a really interesting conversation for people who do read articles about coffee shops that they love or are interviewed for their local or national publications to really think like, “What is the point of this? How am I being portrayed and what does this mean for my business?”
This isn't necessarily the direction I expected to go in, but I'm really into it because I don't think that this is a conversation that many people have. So thank you for being so open and honest with your experiences on this topic.
Sonam: Yeah, of course. Um, it's probably not going to do much for my public profile, but here we are.
Ashley: But more than anything, when I do an interview and I think about like, “What's the point? What do I want to get from somebody?”
And part of it I tried to leave completely open because I think that there's a natural cadence that sometimes happens with people that—like you and I will talk, and we'll find something that is really compelling to both of us. I think that that's pretty much textbook what happened in this conversation.
But at the same time, I also think, “What compelled me to this brand or what compelled me to these people? Why did I want to talk to them?” I think that I really wanted to talk to you because of turnover, if I'm being totally honest, because I feel like I saw the same people in all of your Instagram posts.
And I was like, “Oh, there's something good happening there.” That made me think of all the times we're told in coffee that turnover is natural. We're seeing that play out in all of these union-busting arguments that baristas don't need unions because there's high turnover. We don't want to invest in this “not professional” skill.
Sonam: What?!?!
Ashley: Oh gosh, yeah. I feel like I read all about unions right now because it's like, my obsession right now. I see people talk about, especially laypeople who are just commenting on Facebook posts—which I shouldn't do. I should never read those comments and I always do.
And it's always like, “Why would, like, a barista want a union? They're just like a student or this isn't a professional job.” And I'm like, “You buy coffee every day. Who do you think you're going to buy coffee from?”
Sonam: Exactly.
Ashley: So I think it was interesting to kind of combine those two things.
I dunno—I like getting really meta in these conversations, so it's fun to like reflect back on the conversation.
Sonam: Which I just love about you by the way.
Ashley: Thank you. But I also love the idea that we discovered something new as well. I love that you had an answer that you hadn't shared before, and felt comfortable sharing, which is a big honor. I really appreciate that you were so candid in this conversation. I feel like we discovered a lot of really honest things.
I wonder, as we sign off on this conversation, is there anything that you want people to know about you that we maybe didn't cover about Mina's World that you want to leave people with?
Sonam: I think that I genuinely want to say that, like it's an honor to get to be a part of Mina's World. It's not mine and it's not Kate's—it's everybody who participates in it. It's a product of a lot of desire for goodness, but it's not inherently good or bad. It just is. And what people construct of Mina's World I can't control.
What I can control—I'm doing my very, very, very best to put intention and goodness into what happens. I don't know. I never thought that I would be here. I never thought I would be doing this. I never thought I would be on this podcast that I used to listen to when I was 25, but here we are.
And another thing is just frankly, please support Mina's World. We are a really small business, really, really small. We don't have private investors. We begged one of our parents, like we begged Kate's mom for a loan that we are still paying back and will for the next 20 years.
So if you would like to buy some coffee beans, go to mw4u.net and load up the cart because you will seriously be supporting a very talented group of individuals and a shop that genuinely started from scratch.
I think there's a lot of respect that deserves to be put on that.
Ashley: Sonam, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I've really loved this conversation.
Sonam: Thank you so much for having me.
Sonam Parikh Is Getting Comfortable Saying 'I Don't Know.'