When most people hear the term “drive-by”, the word “cuteness” usually doesn’t follow it.
A Texas and California-based coffee chain dedicated to making a positive impact flips the script through its drive-by-kindness videos that have become a hit on TikTok.
How it works: It’s as simple as saying something nice to a complete stranger. Some of the random compliment bombs dropped on unsuspecting pedestrians:
“Do you work in a restaurant? Because you serve look right now!
“Do you ever get tired?” (“To walk?” asked the woman.) “To be so beautiful!
did you let it go your crown? Because you are a literal king!”
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La La Land Kind Cafe, a kindness-focused organic coffee chain that first launched in Texas in 2019, has started publishing driving kindness videos on TikTok in November 2020. The side project was how the cafe continued to spread joy even as fewer people visited cafes and other indoor public places during the pandemic, founder Francois Reihani said,
“My team and I wanted to do the same thing we were doing in our stores, but do it in the communities,” Reihani, a former employee and current young adoptee at his cafes, told USA TODAY.
Drive-by-kindness: how it works
Random acts of kindness behind the wheel are on the hallmark of La La Land’s business model – it’s a company so dedicated to normalize kindness towards strangers that its employees tell customers they love them when leaving their cafes.
“Those are very strong words that you’re normally only used to hearing from a very close loved one,” Reihani said of the unusual coffee practice. “The world needs to hear them because there should be love between random human beings. We all go through the same things in life.”
La La Land is still fully functioning as brick and mortar cafes. But when his content creation team occasionally hits the road to show kindness, the reactions from recipients are usually the same: a big smile, an appreciative laugh — like the policeman who was told he had the right stay beautiful – or a look of disbelief that a complete stranger could be so nice.
“I love you!” shouted a complimented man one day as he continued on his way.
When the company’s driving kindness side project began in 2020, La La Land content creator Jeremiah Sabado pulled out his phone as his colleague shouted encouraging kind words to strangers on the street.
“He casually posted it on TikTok, and we woke up the next morning to a million views and the thing went viral,” Reihani said.
“At the end of the day, we’re all human beings, we’re all connected in some way,” he said of his company’s mission to spread joy to strangers inside and out. outside cafes.
La La Land Kind Cafe continued to share kind and unexpected messages with strangers from car windows, even during the height of the pandemic. Random compliment videos have since amassed more than a billion views on TikTok in 2022, according to Reihani.
“I think it’s up to our generation to take this on us to bring people together,” he said.
“It will always mark me”
Dallas resident Francesca Schell, recipient of Random Acts of Kindness from La La Land Kind Cafe, said she felt like a waste after a hard day at work in the spring of 2021.
Schell stood outside the law firm where she had recently started working and reflected on the negative comments she had received from a lawyer.
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“I think whenever we’re criticized, especially in a job or when we have someone we look up to, we tend to make it a part of ourselves, it tends to drag us down” , she told USA TODAY.
An unexpected compliment changed everything.
A car stopped on the sidewalk, starting Schell. The friendly passenger, an employee of La La Land Kind Cafe, told her, “You look so well prepared! Schell called back.
“It hit home in a really good way,” she said. “It’s not something that happens often – a random stranger giving you a compliment, especially one that seems quite genuine, so I think it will always hold me back because of that.”
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