Podcasts Culture In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn Ajay Relan and partners work to make Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen a resource for South Los Angeles

Ajay Relan and partners work to make Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen a resource for South Los Angeles

Published: Sept. 3, 2020, 4:55 p.m.

Even when it comes to feeding front-line medical workers, Black communities get the short end of the stick, said Ajay Relan, co-owner of Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen, which he founded in South Los Angeles with fellow restaurateur Yonnie Hagos and Issa Rae, creator of the HBO series Insecure, among other things. During the first couple months of the novel coronavirus pandemic the team at Hilltop brought food to their community hospitals, “because a lot of the more fancy, popular hospitals [in communities like Santa Monica and Beverly Hills] people were feeding left to right, but some of the marginal communities weren’t getting the love that the others were getting,” he said. In April and May the Hilltop Crew made 70,000 meals for those workers, as well as grade school kids who normally relied on school lunch for sustenance, elderly people and others in need in their community.