What is La La Land Kind Cafe?
La La Land Kind Cafe is the coffee shop that put a line around Kierland Commons in January 2026. It sits at 15215 N Kierland Boulevard, Suite 190, in the middle of the center behind Madewell on the 71st Street side, and it is the first Arizona cafe of a Dallas chain that now counts 35 locations across Texas, California, Tennessee and Arizona. It soft-opened the week of December 22, 2025, and held its grand opening on Saturday, January 3, 2026, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., when, by manager Katrina Reyes’ count, more than 500 people lined up around the block, a record for the chain.
The company is the work of Francois Reihani, who founded the We Are One Project in Dallas in 2017 to support young people aging out of foster care, renamed it the La La Land Foundation, and in 2019 opened the first cafe in a historic Dallas home as the foundation’s training ground. The cafes give paid internships to those young adults and hire them where they can. The other thing they do is compliment you. Staff were trained from the start to pay guests genuine compliments; during the pandemic they filmed them, the videos went viral, and the brand’s all-white rooms, bright yellow cups and the chorus of “bye, we love you” at the door became the thing people drive to.
The Kierland room is that template: white walls, yellow accents, two large community tables in the center, a pastry case stocked by JL Patisserie, and a large, loud, young team behind the counter. The menu is espresso and matcha lattes, the signature Banana Cloud, Strawberry Cloud, Purple Rain and French Toast lattes, chai, hibiscus and Arnold Palmer “coolers,” sweet and savory toasts led by the La La Classic Avocado Toast, and a kids’ menu. Hours are 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and to 7 p.m. Sunday, later than any other coffee counter in the district.
It is for the Kierland & Quarter morning crowd, for teenagers who saw it on TikTok, and for anyone who wants a good latte before the shops open. Our verdict: the drinks are better than a viral cafe needs them to be, the mission is real, and once the opening fever cooled it became the best coffee in the Commons.
Using La La Land well
Order on the app. This is the single most useful fact about the place. On the opening weekend the walk-up line ran 45 minutes to an hour; Phoenix New Times, visiting the week after the grand opening, waited about 45 minutes for drinks and a few minutes more for toast. Two sisters the paper interviewed, Tessa and Analise Wachtel, had ordered their Banana Cloud lattes on the La La Land app and had them in about 20 minutes. Order ahead, walk past the queue, pick up at the counter. Weekday afternoons between 2 and 4 need no such tactic.
Order the Banana Cloud. The signature is an iced latte spiked with fresh banana, warm cinnamon and vanilla bean; New Times found the espresso still came through, which is the test. The Strawberry Cloud is its matcha counterpart, sweet at first sip and balanced after a stir. The Purple Rain latte and the French Toast latte are the other names people come for, and the chai, teas and coolers cover the rest. Matcha is the brand’s second product after kindness, and Kierland Commons’ own announcement promised “the perfect matcha latte.”
Eat the toast. The La La Classic Avocado Toast comes in a yellow box, bright with lemon and a generous hit of chili flakes, and it is large; split it. The truffle burrata toast is the richer option. The pastry case is filled by JL Patisserie, the Phoenix bakery, and the chocolate chip cookie is the easy add. There is a kids’ food and drink menu, which matters in a center full of strollers; see our Scottsdale with kids notes. Prices were not published in the coverage we found; budget a coffee-shop bill, with a latte and a toast landing under $25.
Timing and the room. Doors open at 6:30 a.m. every day, with the Commons’ shops not opening until 10, so the first three hours are locals and hotel guests from the Westin Kierland. The two community tables in the center are where to sit; the counter stools by the window are for waiting. The staff shout “you’re welcome” and “bye, we love you” in unison, which is either the point or the price, depending on your mood.
Getting there. Kierland Commons is at Scottsdale Road and Greenway Parkway, and the cafe is near the center of it on 71st Street, behind Madewell. The 71st Street spaces fill early; use Kierland Boulevard or the garage behind the shops. For the wider field, see the best coffee shops in Scottsdale; the nearest serious rival for a straight espresso is Press Coffee, which is a different kind of morning.
The cafe that arrived with a line already attached
Kierland Commons announced La La Land in 2025 for a fall opening, with the slogan “Get Ready to Sip, Smile & Spread Kindness!” What Now Phoenix reported in October that the cafe was expected by December, in time for the holiday shoppers; the soft opening began the week of December 22, and the formal opening came on January 3, 2026. The line was the news. AZFamily ran it as a “Something Good” segment, KTAR and ABC15 covered the opening, Fox 10 sent a camera, and New Times asked the question everyone was asking: is it worth the wait? The paper’s answer was yes for the drinks, with the app as the escape hatch.
The chain had earned the line somewhere else. Reihani’s model, a cafe as the public face of a foundation that trains young adults leaving foster care, is the thing that separates La La Land from the other pastel coffee brands of the 2020s. He told Forbes in 2025 that the idea was “creating this heaven that someone walks into and you say, ‘Hey. This is how the world should be.’” By the time Arizona got one, the company had 29 cafes by New Times’ count in January and 35 by its own directory in the fall, and it was expanding fast: a second Valley cafe at 44th Street and Camelback opened in February 2026, a 1,261-square-foot cafe near True Food Kitchen at Biltmore Fashion Park was announced by RED Development, a Gilbert location near SanTan Village was reported, and on September 24, 2026, a second Scottsdale cafe broke ground at The Lakefront at Scottsdale, the 1978 waterfront property at 7501 E McCormick Parkway that Diversified Partners is redeveloping on McCormick Ranch.
Kierland was the right first door. The Commons has been Macerich’s test market for exactly this kind of tenant since Snooze arrived in 2015 and Shake Shack in 2016: national brands with a following, placed among the dinner rooms to give the center a morning and an afternoon. La La Land is the first of them that came with a social-media audience rather than a food-press one, and the 500-person line was the proof that the audience lives in north Scottsdale too.
What the record does not say: the size of the room, who manages the Arizona expansion day to day, the menu prices, and how many foundation interns work the Kierland counter. Honest assessment: the drinks are good, the toast is better than it needs to be, and the kindness is a script, which you will either find charming or a little exhausting at 7 a.m. The line was a January event, not a permanent condition. Go on a weekday afternoon, order on the app, and judge it as what it is: a very well-run coffee shop with a good reason to exist, and the best one in the Kierland & Quarter district.