Sidóh Cafe, a family-owned Oaxacan coffee shop, looks to be their community’s third space

“The right people will find us,” said Marcos Garcia, co-owner of Sidóh Cafe, an Oaxacan coffee shop that opened four months ago in the heart of West Los Angeles. 

Behind the coffee shop is the dream of bringing a piece of Oaxaca to the West side of L.A., a place where the Garcia family first established roots when they arrived from Oaxaca—that was until gentrification. 

Garcia said they were forced to move away from what was their home away from home when housing and rent prices increased. 

Today, the family returns with a seed of faith that is Sidóh Cafe, co-owned by brothers Marccos Garcia and Jason Garcia. 

From the coffee beans to the wall art and even their name, Oaxacan culture is plastered in every corner of the cafe. Sidóh, which translates to "early morning" in Zapotec, has been a fitting name for the coffee shop that opens its door to clients at 6:30 a.m. 

"For us, to open back up here is to say, 'We've never left. We're still here,’ and that's important,” he told CALÓ News. 

Music by Julieta Venegas, Juan Gabriel and Armando Manzanero, among others, flows throughout the shop, which is filled with the warm smell of a café de olla. 

The coffee shop located at 11102 W. Olympic Blvd, specializes in cappuccinos, lattes and drips, as well as other drinks such as their Sierra Juarez latte, horchata latte, hot chocolate and strawberry matcha. They are also famous for their breakfast burritos and sandwiches with popular Latino dishes such as huevo con salchicha.

Garcia said that for him, his brother and his family, Sidóh Cafe is not just about providing people with good quality coffee but also about uplifting and highlighting Oaxaca as a major contributor and coffee-growing steward. 

The coffee beans that they use to make their horchata lattes, Oaxacan chocolate mochas and cold brews are sourced from La Sierra Norte de Oaxaca, where Garcia’s family has been growing and cultivating coffee for decades.

“It gets sent up by air to Tijuana, and we pick it up in Tijuana every two weeks,” he said. 

From painting the walls, setting up the kitchen, doing electrical work and fixing the plumbing, Garcia said opening the coffee shop was a “full family and community effort.”

He said he was aware of the amount of work the shop, which was previously a sushi bar, would need when it came to remodeling.

“It was really a big family push,” he said. “We had cousins who would come out here at 12 a.m. after work and repaint everything. We had cousins who also did electrical [and the] plumbing work for us. My uncle made the wooden bar. I don't think we would've opened if it were just me and my brother alone.” 

For the Garcia family, being able to call the shop their own has come with years of experience and sacrifice, as everyone in the family has worked in restaurants or cafés at some point. 

“My dad and all my uncles were cooks and chefs in different restaurants across the city and when my brother and I were in high school, we started working in restaurants as bussers and [kitchen] runners,” he said.

Later, the Garcia brothers also worked as baristas and barbacks. “We've had fairly good training,” Garcia said 

The shop, which opened on May 31st, just days before the wave of ICE raids in and around L.A. has also turned into a safe and organizing space for the local community. “Because we're an Oaxacan coffee shop, we really wanted to stand by our values and our community,” Garcia said.  

Garcia said that since then, they have organized fundraisers for families affected by the raids and partnered with local grassroots organizers and rapid response networks like the West L.A. Rapid Response Network.

“It was really easy for us to reach out and be like, ‘Hey, we have this space for whatever you all feel is necessary right now.’ We recognize that a big part of our support comes from the community, so giving back is just as important,” Garcia said. 

The coffee shop has also been used as a food distribution location for families affected by the ICE raids, which began in L.A. on June 6. “We're really focusing on being more than just a coffee shop and really taking up being a third space, a space for the community,” Garcia said. 

For the Garcia family, access and language equity are also important pillars of the shop. 

“That's really important to us,” Garcia said, especially as the shop is located in between West L.A., Sawtelle and Rancho Park, all communities with a predominantly White and Asian population. “Speaking Spanish and greeting people in their native language is important,” he said. 

Garcia and his siblings grew up speaking Zapoteco, a language they have honored through the naming of the coffee shop. “That's what our parents spoke. They never dominated a single language; they would know a little bit of English and a bit of Spanish. Zapoteco is the only language that our grandparents speak,” he said. 

Like for many small, family-owned businesses, it is big corporations that are their biggest competitors. Starbucks and Coffee Bean are only blocks away from Sidóh Cafe and 7-Eleven is across the street.

Despite this, the Garcia family remains proud and confident of what differentiates them from other corporate giants. 

“Our only real competition is cheap 7-Eleven coffee, which is like $1, maybe $1.50, but for another $1.50, [one] can get really good coffee with no preservatives,” Garcia said. “ The right people will support us and the right people that we want coming to the shop are going to show up.”

When asked about the future of Sidóh Cafe, Garcia said he would like to introduce Oaxacan coffee to other places in L.A., but for now, he said he wants the family business to stay true to their values and identity. 

“For us, the main goal is to stay true to our identity and never lose touch with what we grew up with. Sticking true to our identity and to our roots—that's the main thing,” he said.