Among the many apartments situated between Veteran and Gayley just southwest of campus, one apartment unit and its four tenants convert their domestic space into a functioning cafe once per quarter, where proceeds go towards various philanthropic causes in Los Angeles.
The mind behind the project is Alyssa Hai, a fall ’25 graduate student that studied molecular, cell and developmental biology and board member of Confections for a Cause, UCLA’s charitable baking club. She runs the cafe with her three roommates: Kayra Isbara, a fourth-year student studying sociology, Sydney Hoang, a fourth-year student double majoring in molecular, cell and developmental biology and political science and Mehrnaz Bastani, a fourth-year student studying statistics and data science.
The cafe first came into fruition in the fall quarter of this year, the maiden production of a three-part run. The girls were first inspired by seeing influencers on social media promote professional, fully-fledged pastry assemblies in their NYC apartments and figured they could do the same. Friends of Hai asked why she would put in the work if she didn’t plan on charging for it.
“I just wanted to prove that I could,” said Hai. “Then we thought, why not have causes and team up together so other people can benefit as well?”
For the first installment, they were first inspired by their sorority, Phi Sigma Rho, which is philanthropically partnered with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Proceeds from that production went to the society. Their winter quarter cafe was in partnership with Best Friends LA, an organization dedicated to stray animals and veterinarian care, since they had been fostering kittens at the time. The third and final cafe is in support of a UCLA club called Little Librarians, which enables members to teach in schools around LA, such as reading to children and giving brief science lessons.
When it comes to the formulation of their menus, they try to stick to seasonal flavors, but they also enjoy experimenting. They attempt something new that they haven’t baked before, an item that is a known crowdpleaser and something seasonal. Other than that, they brainstorm goods based on what they hear that people like.
Their inspirations come through in their spring menu, respectively. Their innovative pastry is banana bread with a twist — a black sesame swirl. The crowd pleaser this season is a salted caramel cinnamon roll, which Hai mentioned comes very popular, so they make larger batches. As for the seasonal pastry, they’re baking a lemon meringue cookie to usher in spring. Other treats offered are a grape tart, blueberry muffins and chai latte cookies. Their drink lineup includes lattes, orange mocha and honey sea salt shaken espresso.
When it comes to the scale of the menu, they go off a baseline of two dozen items for each respective pastry, Hai said. She does encourage preorders, which gives her a better sense of how many batches to prepare ahead of time. Hai mentioned that she had gotten “really good at making salt bread because everyone really liked that one,” an item that they offered in their winter lineup. At least five dozen scallion garlic rolls were made ahead of time.
Another item that challenged her in production was actually her favorite thing to make — Earl Grey morning buns. She mentioned that she had never made laminated dough before, so figuring out the baking process was a fun challenge since there was no standard recipe available online, even though it was such a common product in bakery cases.
“That was a really fun one to make because I felt like I was making something completely new and completely mine,” Hai said.
Along the same vein, Hai encouraged others to experiment and push themselves to develop their own projects if they’re interested in hosting apartment cafes as well. Though she doesn’t intend to go into the bakery business full-time, her interests have informed the medical career that she is considering. She mentioned that she has been doing gastrointestinal, or GI, research in the internal medicine field. She said that she has been attempting to make modified desserts for people at her clinic with GI conditions, which her cafe experience helped influence.
She also mentioned another unexpected consequence of the cafe, which is that anyone, not just students or people in connection to their partners, can stop by. She said that since they have a grab-and-go service out the window, there sometimes a line flows down the sidewalk, and so they have strangers come buy their products. In many ways, the apartment cafe was not so much about the cafe itself, but also its place in the community, both in Westwood and rooted in philanthropy.
“I feel like this is such a doable thing,” said Hai of the apartment cafe. “Maybe you don’t have to do it for profit, but just host a fun little baking get-together. I highly recommend that people go out of their comfort zone because it can be really fun to do.”
