For Moonwake Coffee Roasters co-founder and MVHS alum ’09 Mabel Yeung, a fun presentation and a balance of flavors are important components when considering the quality of a coffee. When she reaches for a cup of Tamiru Tadesse’s Alo Coffee, its sweet orange tang arrives first. Beneath it, the bold notes of black tea follow and hints of berry linger as the complex flavors complement each other. Despite its relatively acidic nature, Yeung finds that it’s a perfect balance: while its depth is exciting, it’s not overwhelming on the palate.
In 2019, Yeung and her co-founder and husband, Ming Wood, purchased a two-kilogram coffee roaster that allowed them to customize their coffee to their liking. After trying the coffee, friends and family encouraged them to sell it commercially, so in 2023, they opened their online store and started doing pop-ups. After gaining experience in the coffee business, Moonwake Coffee Roasters opened its doors on Saratoga Avenue in October of 2024.
“What really inspired me was trying to give people this moment of calm and reflection through coffee,” Yeung said. “During that time, there was a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of people were really stressed out about what was going to happen,” Yeung said. “Trying to give somebody a tiny respite through a cup of coffee was something that we were really passionate about. We’re also really passionate about the coffee itself. So the combination of those two things inspired us to go out there and give people something to forget about their troubles, even for a little bit.”
Shaun Cassidy, a regular customer who has been following the business since its early Farmers’ Market days, prefers going to the cafe right when it opens because of its quiet ambience, allowing for a more personalized experience with the baristas. During these slower morning hours, he enjoys sampling their pour-overs: little carafes are filled with each pour-over and left for customers to try. Overall, he commends the business for its growth, both menu-wise and staff-wise, and attributes it to their ability to keep their products consistently high quality.
“They’ve done a lot to keep the consistency there and the quality there, but not rush,” Cassidy said. “I work at Apple, and I associate their approach with Apple’s approach. We don’t rush the products out to have the first version of everything. We try to do it the correct way, and then we get it out to customers. So I feel like they have the same flow and that nature, and that’s something I really appreciate about them.”
Moonwake Coffee Roasters operates in two parts: the in-person cafe and the online store, which sells coffee to both consumers and wholesalers. Sourcing the coffee requires sampling from farmers to decide which ones best suit each flavor profile. Yeung believes that the most challenging part of roasting coffee is finding the right profile that brings out the best in a coffee, a process Wood and Yeung refine through continual product adjustment based on customer feedback while staying true to their goal.
In November 2025, they hosted the Peru Cup of Excellence Auction Cupping and won the number three coffee, something Wood believes the Moonwake customer base liked. Hearing feedback made an impact, guiding them towards the most positively received roasts, which they purchased for the cafe. Ultimately, their goal is to boost community engagement, which also helps grow their team.
“We’re always trying to think of different ways to present coffee in a really excellent way to celebrate the coffee itself and also the experience that a customer can enjoy,” Yeung said. “More tactically, the big challenge is building up a team and finding enough people to help you realize your vision because you can’t do it with just two people, since you’re limited in terms of how much reach you can have. To expand that, you have to bring in more people, and trying to find the right people that you know can share that vision and work ethic is quite a challenge.”
Beyond expanding the business’s visibility, these experiences deepened their love for their craft. For Wood, he finds a great sense of fulfillment in transforming the raw coffee beans into a final product. He compares it to cooking: good ingredients alone aren’t enough—you only see the community they create when you cook and share the food. He believes the most rewarding part of running a business is the impact he makes, as well-made coffee can bring joy and even change lives. Cassidy reinforces this, attributing his loyalty to the business to their ability to make his day better.
“They could be having one of the worst days, but we’re able to take that moment and give them something genuine, give them that human connection, and that might last for a long time, and really affect them,” Wood said. “So it’s super rewarding whenever we’re able to do that for a customer, whether they drove in for it or whether they bought our coffee online. That sort of human reward is worth more than anything.”
