Business
Blank Street lands on the West Coast
A New York coffee startup known for its TikTok-friendly matcha drinks is making its West Coast debut.
Blank Street, the fast-growing, venture capital-backed coffee chain that launched during the pandemic, plans to open four stores in Los Angeles County this year, starting in Beverly Hills and Studio City. The first two stores will open in June.
Blank Street Chief Executive Issam Freiha told The Times he has long romanticized L.A. — the place where he fell in love with his wife — and hoped to open stores in the region, but held off until the company was fully ready.
Blank Street has spent several years refining its menu, sharpening its brand identity and developing a hospitality experience that can be scaled, he said. The “handoff” step, in which a barista calls a customer’s name and finishes making their drink in front of them, is a key part of that experience. Customers often record the moment and share it on TikTok.
The chain has nearly 100 global stores, many in New York City and London. Blank Streets are expected to open at the Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood and off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in late fall.
Blank Street wanted to kick off its California expansion in Beverly Hills because of its high profile.
The city represents what most people envision when they think of L.A.: Rodeo Drive, the Beverly Hills Hotel and towering palm trees, said Evan Mateen, head of U.S. real estate for Blank Street. The location, a Tudor Revival-style building on Bedford Drive, was attractive for its visibility, parking spaces and proximity to daily services and salons, he said.
Blank Street’s roots trace back to 2020, when co-founders Freiha and Vinay Menda began selling coffee out of a pale-green coffee cart in the Williamsburg neighborhood of New York City.
They believed there was a gap in the coffee industry. On one end, there were innovative, high-end specialty coffee brands. On the other, there were chains setting the industry standard. They hoped to offer something in the middle, providing high-quality drinks in high-volume settings at an affordable price point.
“We don’t need to be the most amazing cup of coffee you’ve ever had,” Freiha told the New York Times in 2022. “We want to be the really good cup of coffee that you drink twice a day, every day.”
Investors loved the concept. The company raised $67 million in 2021 from investors including General Catalyst, the venture capital firm that funded Airbnb, and Tiger Global, the investment firm that backed shoe brand Allbirds, according to the New York Times. In 2023, a third co-founder, Ignacio Llado, joined, and the company transitioned from carts to small retail stores.
Freiha declined to disclose financials but said Blank Street has a $500-million valuation, is profitable and sells about three times as many drinks per store as it did three years ago.
Blank Street’s target demographic appears to be Gen Z. The company has partnered with celebrities like influencer Emma Chamberlain and singer Sabrina Carpenter, who “worked” a shift at a Blank Street in London to promote her 2024 song “Espresso.”
The chain is set to land on the West Coast on Friday, serving strawberry shortcake matchas and cherry glaze cold brew lattes to an invite-only crowd at Kendall Jenner’s 818 Outpost at Coachella.
Freiha thinks Blank Street’s speed can help it compete in the L.A. region’s competitive coffee and matcha scene.
The best cafes in L.A. tend to have “extremely long lines,” he said. “It’s a very large market with a lot of opportunity.”
Blank Street stores use automatic espresso machines, which improve consistency and reduce labor costs. Matcha, which has recently skyrocketed in popularity and represents half the chain’s business, is prepared in batches for cold drinks, he said. The chain aims to finish assembling drinks within two minutes and thirty seconds from the moment an order is placed.
Blank Street has since shifted to a larger store concept with trendy interior design and ample seating. Freiha said the change was to accommodate the afternoon crowd, which tends to arrive in groups and wants a place to socialize.
The company does not have immediate plans to further expand on the West Coast until the first four stores have “solidified” and have regular customers, Freiha said.
“We need to prove that we meet that bar that people in L.A. have for what a great coffee shop can be,” Freiha said. “That’s our work now.”
Airbnb unveiled a new set of services for guests on Wednesday, adding car rentals, airport pickup and grocery delivery to its online marketplace that connects travelers with local hosts.
Customers can now get groceries delivered to their Airbnb through a partnership with Instacart and have a driver meet them at the airport with Airbnb’s Welcome Pickups. The app is also offering luggage storage in partnership with Bounce and will add in-app car rentals later this summer.
At the same time, Airbnb is ramping up its use of AI by adding AI-powered review summaries and lodging comparisons, the company said.
The company has been expanding beyond lodging since last year, when it introduced Airbnb Experiences and Services, giving guests the option to book private tours and chef-cooked meals through the app.
In an earnings call earlier this month, the company’s chief executive, Brian Chesky, said the company is at “the very, very beginning of how AI is going to change how we all do our jobs.”
The changes are coming in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will take place in 16 cities across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The company said its offering exclusive World Cup experiences, such as watch parties and access to stadiums.
“In terms of what we’ve seen in cumulative bookings heading into the event, the World Cup is slated to be the largest event in Airbnb’s history,” said the company’s chief financial officer, Ellie Mertz, on the earnings call.
Airbnb gained popularity for offering travelers unique and homey stays on other people’s property, but it added boutique hotel bookings to its platform late last year. The move had some customers questioning if the app was straying too far from its original purpose.
In its announcement this week, the company said it is partnering with more independent hotels in 20 top destinations, including New York, London and Singapore. On the earnings call, Chesky said hotels on Airbnb could become a multibillion-dollar revenue business.
The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2007 and gave homeowners the opportunity to earn money by renting out their space to travelers seeking something different from a hotel. Airbnb bookings can range from private bedrooms in a shared home to luxury mansions and yachts.
The company’s revenue grew 18% year over year to $2.7 billion in the first quarter, while net income increased slightly to $160 million. Airbnb’s new services and offerings could transform it from a home-sharing platform to a holistic travel marketplace, analysts said.
Shares of the company have increased by 14% over the past six months and fell by less than 1% on Thursday.
Elon Musk wants to take investors on a ride to the moon — and beyond.
His pioneering rocket company SpaceX filed Wednesday for what’s expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, potentially raising at least $75 billion and valuing the company at as much as $2 trillion.
The registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an expected public offering next month explicitly sets aside stocks for retail investors, though the exact number will be spelled out in a later filing, as will the offering price and company valuation.
Interest in the stock offering is expected to be high despite the billionaire’s controversial politics, including his involvement last year with the Department of Government Efficiency, the makeshift cost-cutting effort that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of government jobs.
“Potential investors are probably just as polarized as the electorate is too, given his dabbling in politics,” said Carol Schleif, chief market strategist for BMO Private Wealth. “But it’s not just the SpaceX IPO per se, it’s a bigger, broader excitement among investors for space investment in general.”
Investor interest was piqued by the Artemis II moon mission this year that SpaceX did not participate in, she said. However, the company is expected to play a larger role in future missions that take astronauts to the moon..
Ultimately, Musk, 54, wants to establish a colony on Mars but those plans have been set on the back burner, with NASA now focusing on moon missions.
Musk will remain the company’s chief executive and chairman. Under a dual-class stock structure as a holder of special Class B shares he will be able to control the election of directors, the filing says.
The IPO is expected to be at least twice as large as the current record holder: Saudi Aramco, the state-controlled national oil and gas company of Saudi Arabia, which raised nearly $30 billion in 2019.
Nearly two dozen banks will be underwriting the IPO and offering shares to investors, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup.
Founded in 2002 in El Segundo, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industry by developing the reusable Falcon 9 rocket that has radically lowered launch costs.
The company moved its headquarters from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024. However, SpaceX retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Scores of former SpaceX employees have launched startups in Southern California, including rocket company Relativity Space, hypersonic missile startup Castelion and satellite manufacturer Apex Space.
Since developing its reusable rocket technology, SpaceX has established its Starlink network as the leading satellite-based broadband internet service. It also is moving into satellite-based cellular service and this year merged with Musk’s xAi artificial intelligence company that also included his X social network.
Marco Cáceres, an aerospace analyst at Teal Group, said that the advantage of going public for SpaceX lies in the IPO’s ability to raise a large amount of capital quickly to complete development of its Starship rocket.
“It is going to dominate the market even more than the Falcon 9 is dominating the market now,” he said. “That’s going to be ultimately what’s going to drive their business for the next 10 years.”
The 12th test launch of Starship is set for Friday from the company’s south Texas launch facility. The rocket is the third version of craft, standing more than 400 feet tall and with about three times the payload of the second version.
The regulatory filing claims that the market for its rocket, internet and mobile telephone businesses could be as large as $28.5 trillion.
SpaceX also plans to launch thousands of orbiting data centers powered by the sun that would perform AI calculations.
With the company making massive capital investments, it recorded a $4.28-billion loss in the first quarter. Last year, it recorded $18.7 billion in revenue and lost $4.94 billion, according to the filing.
The public offering is expected to hit the market next month after a “road show,” during which SpaceX will seek to drum up interest from institutional and retail investors.
It will arrive after a fairly quiet year for IPOs that was brightened last week when Cerebras Systems, a Sunnyvale company that makes semiconductors for AI supercomputers, went public.
Shares at Cerebras were offered at $185 and jumped 68% on its opening day. They closed Wednesday at $290.69.
Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said the SpaceX offering would dwarf that of Cerebras, as it is expected to raise more than every IPO combined in the last two years.
“A win here or a loss could really impact the IPO market,” he said. “The sheer size of this deal is going to make or lose fortunes.”
Among the oddest disclosures of the IPO is a decision by the company’s board in January to grant Musk 1 billion Class B shares if the company reaches a certain market capitalization and establishes a “permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”
Erewhon opened its newest location in Glendale on Wednesday, marking the luxury grocer’s 14th store in Southern California with more set to open soon.
The new store, located at 520 N. Glendale Ave., includes the chain’s signature cafe and tonic bar as well as an indoor-outdoor patio space.
Known for its upscale, trendy products and high prices, Erewhon has grown into a tourist destination in Los Angeles and a hot spot for celebrities and influencers.
The Glendale location will bring Erewhon staples to trendy consumers in the area, including the beloved Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie, which until last year was named after the model Hailey Bieber.
Employees at the store handed out complimentary gift bags and fresh flowers during the grand opening Wednesday morning.
“This location was designed to reflect the spirit of the neighborhood while creating a welcoming space to gather, centered around wellness, connection, and a commitment to the quality standards that define Erewhon,” Erewhon President Josephine Antoci said in a statement.
The company purchased the space, which was formerly a hardware store, in 2024.
Erewhon has locations in several of Southern California’s wealthiest areas, including Calabasas and Beverly Hills. It also has stores in Venice, Manhattan Beach and at the Grove.
“Erewhon’s decision to invest in Glendale reflects confidence in our city’s economic future,” Glendale Mayor Ardashes Kassakhian said in a news release.
The grocer was founded in 1966 by Japanese immigrants Michio and Aveline Kushi — pioneers of the natural-foods macrobiotic movement — who began selling imported organic goods out of their Boston home. In 1969, the company opened its first Los Angeles location on Beverly Boulevard.
Josephine and Tony Antoci bought the company in 2011 and helped launch it to its luxury status with a cult-like following. Tony serves as chief executive while Josephine handpicks much of the store’s merchandise.
By the mid-2010s, Erewhon had become a watering hole for celebrities such as the Kardashians and the Beckhams.
The company has its eye on further expansion. A Thousand Oaks location is slated to open this August and stores in Costa Mesa and downtown Los Angeles are planned for 2027. An Erewhon cafe opened in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new David Geffen Galleries earlier this month.
The Pacific Palisades location, which shut down after the wildfires last year, is set to reopen in January.
The Glendale Erewhon takes the place of Virgil’s Hardware Home Center, which opened in 1932 and closed in 2019.
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