Little King Coffee’s Empire Expands to Montecito

There’s an almost insatiable need for cultivating community behind Little King Coffee, the shop that opened in Buellton in the spring of 2024 and just debuted their second location near the bird refuge in Montecito last month. 

“A lot of coffee shop owners talk about their spots being workspaces, with computers being on and it being silent,” said Grace Gates, who, with her husband, Ryan Dobosh, named their business after their 2-year-old son, Roger. “But that’s never been the case at our shop in Buellton, and I hope that’s not the case at our shop in Santa Barbara either. Because of how wonderful these spaces are, you are able to come and enjoy it with somebody.”

Both Little Kings feature the same simple yet warm vibe, pouring Coastal Collective Coffee, serving breakfast sandwiches with High on the Hog bacon, and selling house-made chocolate chip cookies. The Montecito spot upped the menu ante by adding Oat Bakery bread to the mix, enabling a full avocado toast regime. And it’s all quite fairly priced, at least by today’s standards. 

“It’s been so much busier than I thought it would be,” said Dobosh when I visited on the third day it was open. “If I hadn’t done Buellton first, this would have eaten me alive.”

That says a lot for restaurant veterans like Dobosh and Gates. Raised in Los Angeles and educated at Cate School in Carpinteria, Gates went to Austin, Texas, soon after graduating from Emerson College in Boston. She lucked into a job opening the much celebrated Emmer & Rye, which is where she met Dobosh. Originally from Seattle, he too was into theater, and they quickly hit it off. 

[Click to zoom] Little King Montecito | Credit: Elisenda Farison

They see running a restaurant as much like putting on a play. “We’re all gonna do something together,” Gates told me last summer when I visited the Buellton spot, running into three wine industry folks I knew. “Everyone is on the same page, everyone is working toward the same thing.”

During the pandemic, while Gates was working at the Carpenter Hotel — which had basically turned into a coffee shop — they kept reading about the amazing things that Greg and Daisy Ryan were doing at Bell’s in Los Alamos.  

“Watching Greg and Daisy during the pandemic, they were so good,” said Gates, referring to the partner popups and their launch of nonprofit Feed the Valley. “Who are these people?”

When they posted a job opening for the to-be-opened Bar Le Côte in Los Olivos, Gates reached out. “We were here two months later,” she said.

She took the GM job at Bar Le Côte, and Dobosh was hired at Mattei’s. But opening delays at that hotel led him to the GM job at Bell’s instead. Gates was soon promoted to manage food and beverage for the restaurants’ overarching Companion Hospitality Group. 

By the time Roger was born, they were ready to do their own thing. A coffee shop, with mainly daytime hours, made a lot of sense, even though their background on that front was relatively limited. They checked out a former hair studio on Highway 246’s residential westside, and moved in six months of renovations later. 

“We felt that there was a need in this community to have a gathering space and a coffee shop that felt really special,” said Gates, who loves seeing moms walk in with their babies and winemakers discussing harvest over lattes. “It’s become a little hub. Are there this many people in Buellton? Who knew?”

Their focus on personal service is key. Rather than holler your name at the counter, for instance, they’ll actually take the extra steps to walk out your drink. “People who are good at hospitality are community nerds,” Gates likes to say. “We’re constantly asking how to make something so transactional actually nice.”

They were approached by the Runyon Group that’s developing The Post, the small complex next to the end of Cabrillo Boulevard across the street from the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge. It didn’t seem so crazy once they walked the space, especially because there was such a large patio overlooking the lagoon. (The occasional slough stink is the only occasional negative here.)

The early signs are stellar, Would-be employees lined up without any advertising. “I think they all want to work somewhere they can be proud of,” said Dobosh. They sold out of food the first day by 12:30 p.m., so he’s already ordered more coffee from Coastal, more bacon from High on the Hog, and more hot sauce from Priedite Barbecue, who they know from Bell’s. 

“You can grab coffee and be in a beautiful place — there’s not much of that in the world for these third places,” said Gates. “We see this as an opportunity to really build a space that could be somewhere for people to catch up.”
Little King Coffee, 1801 E. Cabrillo Blvd., Montecito; 290 Valley Station Dr., Ste. 101, Buellton; littlekingcoffee.com