Our Philosophy — A Letter from the Founder

To the world,

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I’d like to share a little about why I built Coco Coffee House.

It was 2021. I was working at a decent job with decent society — and increasingly desperately — I was feeling helplessly lost. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and wouldn’t see anyone.

I was trying my very best to be an independent woman in modern society, and I kept telling myself that it was only right that I should face everything on my own.

Thankfully, I met the wonderful women with whom I would found Women in Work. Getting to know these ladies, my spirits improved spectacularly.

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I realised that ever since I started my working life, my best friends had gradually drifted further, and I missed my time with my girl friends — loud chatter and nonstop laughter, sticking together even when we went to the bathroom. I discovered that there was a part of me that only girls could understand, and it was missing in my adult life. In adult life, it’s as if I’m always having to play a role in society — someone’s co-worker; someone’s romantic partner; someone’s acquaintance. It’s too hard to simply be friends with people — the way we had been as girls.

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In a world built for men, whenever I hear women spoken of in the plural, too often I hear us being painted as feisty and catty — but that’s not how we are. Womens’ instinct is to support, to understand, and to find the best in each other. We are the best thing that we can have — simple friendship and connection.

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I realised that this was what I had to bring out in the world; what if we made a safe space for ourselves — where we didn’t need to be afraid of judgement, where we could be free to be ourselves, for each other?

So, I started Coco Coffee House, and we started to build a bridge for women in work through coffee chats; coffee on us. We printed pretty “coffee tickets” with coffee shops on nice card paper, and arranged two women who’ve never met each other before to just meet and chat. They met just like that, not knowing how one another looked like, or why they wanted to make friends — and magic happened; it was a three hour chat, and they both enjoyed it so much — just how simple friendship was like.

True connection is a magical thing, and deserves our constant safeguarding of it from forces of ill-will. In our community, we protect everyone with our rules; from harassment, bullying, unsolicited sales pitches. We take connection and being genuine seriously, and Coco Coffee House will always be a safe space for females to be friends.

Our story continues today. The world deserves to be able to make friends just like when we were girls.

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Love,

Yina

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