Meet Jin Kim | @coffeeaddictjin

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jin Kim and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jin, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
The idea behind my coffee Instagram truly starts with my passion for exploring new coffee shops. I was a junior in college at UCSB when I started my coffee Instagram and it all started when I was at a new coffee shop downtown with my friend. I noticed a lot of people create food Instagram to share and review food, so I thought I’d incorporate that idea with my love for coffee. It was such a fun way to share all the different coffee shops I got to try throughout Santa Barbara, especially because there wasn’t a lot nearby. It was also nice because I could refer back to my posts when my friends asked me if there were any good coffee shops nearby. I also loved going to local coffee shops and supporting local businesses so I loved featuring them on my page. After college, I really started to post a lot on my page because Covid hit, and going out of the house just for a little to get coffee gave me so much joy. And today, I still continue to post my content for fun and to share with my friends as well as people who follow me where they can enjoy a good cup of coffee.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m always excited to share my content with everyone because I love to explore different local coffee shops. I love that they can see and hopefully want to visit them as well. I also love that although my posts are about coffee, you inherently get to know more about me. I love that people are open to hearing my opinion on the coffee shop or what my favorite drink there was. I also love incorporating my coffee content with things I like. For example, I love traveling. Therefore, I love exploring local coffee shops that are nearby to where I’m traveling to. I also created guides on my coffee Instagram where people can see the breakdown of my coffee contents by the city. I also love that I started to post more stories and share more of my coffee lover friends or my daily coffee pictures.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
As a person who loves planning and making itineraries – this is the perfect question for me. I actually also happen to have a friend visiting me this weekend so this is a perfect question. I’d ideally love to start with a brunch at Urth Caffe in Laguna Beach and explore the area with our blended matcha boba in our hands. For coffee, I’d take them to Wall Writers or KRISP Coffee. For dinner, I’d take them to Nova or Paradise Dynasty. I’d hang out at the Irvine Spectrum to explore the hello kitty cafe as well as other shops. For boba, I’d take them to taste or 7leaves.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to give credit to all my friends who encouraged me to create a coffee Instagram in the first place and friends who continue to support me today. I was hesitant on creating an account at first because I was scared that people would find it lame or cringe. However, my friend Stephanie also created an account with me to share her love for matcha the same day I did so I think that pushed me to create one as well. After creating our accounts, we continued to explore more coffee shops together and document them. Although she no longer has her matcha account, I am glad she was there with me. I also was always hesitant on sharing my coffee nstagram with personal friends I knew in real life because I didn’t want to spam them with my coffee posts and was afraid they would find it lame yet again. However, the personal friends that follow my account happen to be my biggest supporters, which I adore. Although my account is still relatively small, I truly appreciate everyone and my friends for following along on my coffee journey because my intent in creating this account was to do that.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coffeeaddictjin/