By For an environment that serves unique coffee and fits the college demographic due to its location in the community, Tierra Mia Coffee at 425 Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach is the place to visit.
Tierra Mia Coffee has 14 locations in California, all of which provide diverse coffee to suit their diverse cities. The Long Beach location is no exception.
The Tierra Mia in Long Beach was decorated for Halloween, while maintaining their identity as a diverse coffee shop. Photo credit: Isaiah Zuniga
The coffee shop opened its first location in South Gate, Calif. in 2008. As the company continued to grow throughout the years, they opened locations in Downtown Los Angeles, La Habra, Santa Ana, Long Beach, Anaheim and Pico Rivera.
In Dec. 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathon Gold considered the Tierra Mia Coffee in downtown Los Angeles one of the ten best coffee shops in the city.
Tierra Mia Coffee in Long Beach drives in a student demographic of customers because of the location’s convenience, being close to Long Beach City College and CSULB.
“I would say about more than 90% of our customers are either LBCC or CSULB students,” Heriberto Maldonado Jr., manager of Tierra Mia Coffee in Long Beach, said.
Even former CSULB students visit the Long Beach location for their coffee needs. One of those former students is Curtis Clark, who attended CSULB from 1968 to 1972.
“They’re a refreshing change,” Clark said as his drink order was called. “They have different flavors that they don’t have at other places.”
Maldonado said Tierra Mia Coffee focuses on Latin-inspired coffee beans and other unique beans. “We have coffee beans from most parts of Latin America,” he said. “Right now, we have beans from Yemen and last month, we had some from Ethiopia.”
Tierra Mia Coffee’s slogan is “El mejor café viene de tierra mia,” which translates to “the best coffee comes from my land.” Tierra Mia Coffee utilizes the various coffee beans to provide the community with unique flavors they come back for.
“El mejor cafe vierne de tierra mia” is the saying at Tierra Mia, which translates to the best coffee comes from my land and is the slogan of the Tierra Mia franchise. Photo credit: Isaiah Zuniga
The coffee shop is also a location that people go to for the various origin of their coffee beans. Les Peters is one such person who appreciates this about the coffee shop.
Peters, an alumnus from the 2001 CSULB graduate class—and recently hired in the American Indian Studies Program at his alma mater—said he loves coffee and the diversity that Tierra Mia Coffee provides.
“They have unique drinks, made with different beans from all over Central and Southern America,” Peters said. “Every time I went there, I’ve seen employees that were a direct reflection of the community that they were in.”
The CSULB alumni said that the shop’s mentality about coffee exemplifies why he visits the local coffee shop often. “They cater to the community,” he said. “They follow the passion I have for coffee and I always support those kinds of small businesses.”
Peters added that he would visit Tierra Mia Coffee in Lynwood before the Long Beach location opened when he went to business meetings in Los Angeles. The CSULB alumnus said he enjoys Tierra Mia Coffee so much he would bring some of his coworkers to the coffee shop.
Peters said he doesn’t visit the Long Beach location often these days, but when the location first opened in 2015, he would visit them two to three times per week.
He added that he and his daughter wake up early on the weekends and go to coffee shops, like Tierra Mia Coffee, all across the area.
“I wake up at 7:30 a.m. on the weekends and tell my daughter ‘let’s go get coffee somewhere in Los Angeles,'” Peters said. “I usually order Americanos, but if I’m having a long day, I order a cold brew.”
For more information and updates about Tierra Mia, visit their website or Instagram.
