KIT Coffee

While there are literally thousands of coffee shops to choose from in Orange County – many with highly familiar menus – execution and location make all the difference between obscurity and continued success. Developed specifically as a community-focused cafe with a name suggesting guests “Keep In Touch,” KIT Coffee is an example of how differentiated execution can make one business’s superficially similar collection of drinks and pastry items stand out from the crowd.

KIT has grown slowly but steadily since its 2016 founding, starting with a Costa Mesa-adjacent Newport Beach location on Westcliff Drive (near Little France Bakery and Salt & Straw) before adding an Irvine business park shop (now next to Rise Bagels and Fat of the Land) in 2022, and a third location inside the Newport Beach Public Library (between Sugarfish and Fashion Island) in spring 2026. Each of the locations has a different parking challenge – limited parking at the first location’s plaza, free or free validated parking garages for the other two – and in the case of the Irvine location, weekday-only hours, but as frequent lines of waiting people demonstrate, they’re in spots where people already visit and work, and first-time visitors tend to return for more.

As suggested above, KIT’s menu is largely familiar, but it does have a few small twists. Between a one-page list of coffee and espresso drinks ($3 to $6.50), various teas and tea lattes ($4 to $6), and signature drinks ($7.50 to $9.50), the stand-out flavors are blueberry lavender, salted maple, and strawberry milk; slightly different spins on ube, matcha, and coconut are also available. More innovation can be found in a short second page of seasonal specials ($6 to $9), which included an “ice ‘cream top’ series” on our summer 2026 visit – four drinks pairing cream tops with ice cream cone-like ingredients, such as vanilla waffle cone, neapolitan, and strawberry milkshake. Under-advertised at the Irvine location but more visible through online menus, a small collection of kitchen-prepared food items includes savory or sweet toasts ($12 to $19), Korean-hinted fried rices ($15 to $18), and breakfast burritos ($14 to $18); pastries are $4 to $5 each.

Regarding online menus: KIT appears to fairly balance fulfilling both in-person and online orders, using shelves to hold items fulfilled through its Toast-based website, each clearly labeled as to who ordered what. That said, its receipts include orderers’ full names, phone numbers, and email addresses, which could stand to be anonymized somewhat – we digitally blurred those details out in our photo.