When most people hear the term “drive-by,” the word “kindness” usually doesn’t follow.
A Texas and California-based chain of coffee shops dedicated to making a positive impact is flipping the script through their kindness videos that have become a hit on TikTok.
How it works: It’s as simple as saying something nice to a stranger. Some of the random compliment bombs dropped on unsuspecting pedestrians:
“You work in a restaurant? Because you are serving looks right now!”
“Don’t you ever get tired?” (“Of walking?” asked the woman.) “Of being so beautiful!”
“Did you drop your crown? Because you are literally a king!”
A HAPPY ENDING:Dozens of people said they would go to the autograph session – they didn’t. Thousands of strangers assured that this was not the end of the story.
DIVERSITY ON HOLIDAYS:They didn’t grow up seeing a Black Santa – so they became one.
La La Land Kind Cafe, a kindness-focused chain of organic cafes that first launched in Texas in 2019, began posting kindness videos on TikTok in November 2020. The side project was the cafe’s way to continue to spread joy, even as fewer people visit cafes and other public places closed during the pandemic, said founder François Reihani,
“My team and I wanted to do the same thing we were doing in our stores, but in the communities,” Reihani, who works with former and current foster youth at her cafes, told USA TODAY.
Directed kindness: how it works
Random acts of kindness are hallmarks of La La Land’s business model – it’s a company so dedicated to normalizing kindness to strangers that its employees tell customers they love them when they leave their cafes.🇧🇷
“These are very strong words that you normally only hear from a very close loved one,” Reihani said of the cafeteria’s unusual 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 still operates fully as brick-and-mortar cafes. But when your content creation team occasionally takes to the streets to offer kindness, the recipients’ reactions are usually the same: a huge smile, an appreciative laugh – like the police officer who was told he had the right to remain pretty – or a look of disbelief that a complete stranger could be so kind.
“I love you!” a man once praised shouted as he continued on his way.
When the company’s kindness side project kicked off in 2020, La La Land content creator Jeremiah Sabado pulled out his phone as his colleague shouted kind, encouraging words to strangers on the street.
“He nonchalantly posted it on TikTok, and we woke up the next morning to a million views and something going viral,” Reihani said.
“At the end of the day, we are all human beings, we are all connected in a certain way,” he said of his company’s mission to spread joy to strangers in and out of cafes.
La La Land Kind Cafe continued to share kind, unexpected messages with strangers from car windows even as the pandemic’s height subsided. Since then, the random compliment videos have accumulated over a billion views on TikTok as of 2022, according to Reihani.
“I think it’s our generation’s duty to take on this to bring people together,” he said.
‘It will always stand out to me’
Dallas resident Francesca Schell, who received the La La Land Kind Cafe’s random acts of kindness, said she felt like a mess after a hard day at work in the spring of 2021.
Schell stood outside the law firm where he had recently started working and reflected on some negative comments he had received from a lawyer.
GOOD NEWS:‘I love you’ are some of the first words this woman hears
“I think whenever we’re criticized, especially in a job or when we have someone we look up to, we tend to make that part of ourselves, it tends to drag us down,” she told USA TODAY.
An unexpected compliment changed everything.
A car pulled up to the curb, startling Schell. The friendly passenger, an employee at La La Land Kind Cafe, told her, “You look so put together!” Schell recalled.
“It hit home in a really good way,” she said. “It’s not something that happens a lot – that a random stranger will give you a compliment, especially one that seems quite genuine, so I think it’s always going to stand out to me because of that.”