LOOKING BACK
For a decade now, Boyle Heights Beat’s youth journalists have reported on some of the neighborhood’s most outstanding businesses, institutions and individuals. In this recurring series, we’re revisiting our sources and updating some of those stories.
As Roosevelt High School students begin to trickle into Arctic Hotspot, cafe owners Jonathan Mora and his wife, Christina, stand at the ready. They work in tandem, dancing between the counter and kitchen of the small brick and mortar they own at 2509 East 4th Street.
On his forearm, Mora wears a tattoo proudly, a five-digit zip code: 90033, which encompasses Boyle Heights.
Mora has been in the neighborhood since he immigrated from Mexico at six and has lived in Boyle Heights ever since. Having worked in the hospitality industry for ten years after serving in the Marine Corps, he said working at Arctic Hotspot taught him about experimentation and loving what he does.
“It’s taught me to take pride in what we do with our hands,” Mora said, referencing the craft and care he puts into the dishes he assembles in the kitchen.
Now in their 18th year of business, and 10 years after Boyle Heights Beat first wrote about Arctic Hotspot, Mora and his wife have grown their clientele and menus respectively. Warm chilaquiles, hearty breakfast burritos, an array of sandwiches, and dozens of more globally influenced dishes are available for the community to enjoy in a bright, open space.
The Moras’ connection to the community even extends to Boyle Heights Beat, where their daughter is a student reporter. For nearly a decade, Arctic Hotspot has provided catered meals for the Beat’s student meetings twice a week.
Traveling the world and bringing culinary techniques and flavors to Boyle Heights has been something the Moras strive for. Although their cafe now has expanded to more intricate dishes, the original concept of the space was to specifically serve pastries from every corner of the world.
“I wanted people to come to Boyle Heights and find desserts from France. From Cuba, desserts from Mexico, desserts from Japan, desserts from Greece, desserts from anywhere in the world,” Christina Mora said.
THREATENED BY THE PANDEMIC
Thinking about the future of their business wasn’t always as straightforward as he thought, Jonathan Mora admitted. Like for many small businesses, the recent fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to end their practice.
As tensions increased due to the growing threat of a pandemic in the spring of 2020, Mora and his wife quickly recognized a shift in customer and client behavior.
“I remember March 13th of 2020. I started getting phone calls, phone call after phone call, cancellation after cancellation,” Mora said. “We lost everything that we had booked for that entire summer. So that really set us back.”
Catering, which accounted for 85% of Arctic Hotspot’s business before the pandemic, was no longer an option for Arctic Hostpot. Mora eventually had to lay off some of his staff and even had to reduce his own hours.
But the Mora family maintained composure and entrusted in their Christian faith to keep them afloat. Although the pandemic shuttered their storefront from indoor dining, the family realized that community connection was something they needed to give more energy towards.
“Honestly, it made us see that what we should have been focusing on was the walk in aspect of our business because catering was so big. I think we lost touch of who our customers are,” Mora said.
When COVID restrictions finally eased, and their doors slowly creaked open, Mora said their focus had changed. They wanted to connect with the community more than ever before.
“If we consider ourselves a community based business then we need to connect with the community,” Mora said. “We need to know the neighbors and we need to address people by name and just show that we care, that we worry about them, that we treat them as an individual and we value who they are.”
The Moras especially understand their connection to their student neighbors at Roosevelt High School, and have a history of actively supporting teams through sponsorships, including the school’s football team, and make sure they’re fed before big games.
“The tennis team, The swim team. Soccer team. We don’t coordinate with the staff, but we coordinate with the kids. We want to make them feel important,” Mora said.
Looking to expand in the future, Mora recalled conversations he’d have with longtime customers who’d suggest they’d do well in more affluent neighborhoods and cities around Los Angeles, like Pasadena or Santa Monica. To which Mora voiced his polite disagreement. He wants to keep their business on the Eastside, to continue to share new things with the people living there.
“We choose to be in Boyle Heights. We don’t want to leave the community because we want to bring something to this community that isn’t found here,” Mora said.
Considering their longtime place in Boyle Heights, Mora said he notices when new businesses pop up in the neighborhood and goes out of his way to introduce himself and welcome them to the community. He understands how hard it is to open and run a business during an economically challenging time.
“We try to encourage them, do something to invest in them. If you see something you like somewhere, bring it to the neighborhood. Do your own twist to it,” Mora said with a smile on his face.
This story was updated on Dec. 227 to correctly identify the Mora’s religious faith.
READ THE ORIGINAL:
In 2012, then Roosevelt High School Student Kevin Martinez wrote this Arctic Hotspot feature:
An aromatic oasis for the community
Personalized service from two sisters makes Arctic Hotspot coffee shop special
