Behind the Story: Kin Coffee Bar during a pandemic

San Luis Obispo has a vibrant coffee scene and Kin Coffee Bar is no exception. Lauren Brown and I chose to feature Kin because of its atmosphere, the employees and specialty drinks. 

“When I saw Kin’s unique and colorful drinks, I knew that there was a story that I wanted to investigate,” reporter Lauren Brown said.

We also noticed that the business was very active on social media and in their shop regarding social and political issues. We then set up an interview with owner Julian Contreras via Instagram messaging and were able to dive deeper into what makes Kin unique.

We planned some questions, went to Kin and conducted the interview. 

“From the start, we knew the owner had a really cool story and were excited to tell it,” reporter Lauryn Luescher said. “Julian was down to earth and genuine and that definitely comes through in this business.” 

During the interview, one thing that really stood out to us was when he talked about his biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. He talked about how difficult it was to keep his employees and how dedicated they were to the shop and working there. He told us that at the beginning of the pandemic they decided they were going to close for good but his employees came in the next day and worked for free. 

“I saw the strength behind that I went and got a night time job. So I was working nights and then opening up the shop and they would close it,” Contreras said. “It was like they were pushing to keep it open and I was pushing to pay them.”

We figured if this business was struggling to keep their employees there had to be many other local businesses in the same boat. We then went to contact the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce and they were able to give us data on the number of businesses that had closed since the pandemic. 

We were then able to include this in our story and it could even lead to an entirely different story altogether. 

We wrapped this story up into a video, a Q&A feature, an interactive component and a social media strategy that will include Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. For the interactive component, we will be using a Knight Lab tool that slides a photo from before to after to show the shop before COVID-19 and after. On Instagram, we will put the video on IGTV and share that on the story as well as post on the feed. For Facebook, we will put our photos into an album, and post the video. On Twitter, we will post the video and a poll asking what people’s favorite coffee places are.