For Laura Newman and Jim Tauber, the couple who opened Lefty’s Coffee Collective in Los Olivos in January, aligning their moral values with their business model is essential. To put sustainability in practice, both environmental and social, they created an inclusive community space for residents that doesn’t involve drinking wine or spending lots of money.
“We really saw that the community needed it,” explains Newman, who came to Los Olivos with Tauber in 2010 from Los Angeles, where they ran a successful counseling practice together. “Los Olivos is a lovely town, and obviously very tourist-friendly, but it felt like the locals were sort of left behind.”
On the surface, Lefty’s is a smartly designed coffee shop with ample indoor/outdoor seating, charging stations, and super-fast Wi-Fi that’s filled with locals sipping their morning coffee, tourists grabbing a bite before a day of tasting, and remote workers who don’t have their own offices. But there’s more happening here.