Our Story

Persimmon Coffee is an independent coffee roaster and shop founded out of a devotion to genuine community, empathy, and storytelling. After crossing paths while working in the coffee industry at different stages of life, we bonded over our connectedness to our city and its people. We’re committed to not only delivering quality beans and service, but also providing a safe space for anyone and everyone to be able to access the beauty and ritual of specialty coffee.

Persimmon is a brand, a community, and a place of respite that asks you to simply come as you are. Because you are enough.

Persimmons embody who we are and the story we want to tell.

It can take up to ten years for a persimmon tree to bear its first fruits. The patience, care, and commitment that they require, bundled with the pure warmth, sweetness, and joy that they provide in the colder months, constitute why we chose to name ourselves Persimmon.

Native to China, persimmons spread to Korea and Japan and finally reached California in the mid-1800s. However, they are often overlooked in North America and sometimes mistaken for others that look similar. Thus, inclusivity is central to our identity. We welcome everyone—those who are coffee connoisseurs, those who don't know a thing about coffee; those who may smile and feel a sense of pride when they see the word persimmon, those who have absolutely no idea what a persimmon is.

  • Meet the Team

  • Chaereen Pak

    Co-Founder

  • Sawyer Beckley

    Co-Founder

We launched our business on Christmas Day in 2020 as a gift to our loved ones.

We began during unprecedented times. While engaged in a fight for our lives with a global pandemic and deep racial injustices, we cooked for our friends on the medical front lines, participated in peaceful protests, and checked up on the elderly in our community. Through it all, we witnessed the power of empathy. So we went into business as an act of remembrance of who we are and what we can do. We have faith—and still do—that Persimmon can make our city a little bit warmer, a little bit sweeter, and maybe, even a better place.

We operated as a mobile pop-up for a year and a half, from University City to Queen Village. From once a month, to every weekend, to every day. We still laugh about how we somehow managed to run our very first pop-up in below-freezing weather with two Zojirushi carafes of drip coffee and a small space heater to defrost our toes.

Persimmon opened its very own storefront in the summer of 2022. Our journey thus far has been a gift in and of itself. A gift given to us by all of you. We would not be here without the family, friends, small businesses, and customers who supported and believed in us.

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.