How’s It Going To End? is a Destination Hang
The new Montrose coffee shop promises more than good coffee and quality pastries
Photographs by David Gurzhiev
On the corner of Verdugo Boulevard and Park Place in Montrose, a suburban enclave north of Glendale sandwiched between the Verdugo Mountains and the Angeles National Forest, sits a coffee shop disguised as a dry cleaner. A tall red sign hovers over the one-story building, which dates back to 1957, and bears the name The Original Regal, a remnant from the former occupants. Today, instead of racks of pressed dress shirts covered in plastic, you’ll find a La Marzocco espresso machine and a pastry case of muffins and croissants. The interior is minimalist and spacious, with stone-shaped light fixtures, a flat-topped rock that doubles as a surface for cappuccinos, a couple of tables and countertops, and big sliding glass doors that open up to a serene native plant garden with more seating.
The coffee shop is quirkily called How’s It Going To End? and it’s the type of place that invites you to stay a while. “More than anything, I wanted a place to hang out and see people, to run into people randomly,” says the owner, Michelle Hantoot. Alongside her husband, Ben, Hantoot founded Silver Lake’s Dinosaur Coffee, which they sold to Saadat and Janine Awan of Echo Park’s Woodcat Coffee in 2020, not long after moving to Montrose with their young family. They had no plans to open another coffee shop in their new neighborhood, but when the property on Verdugo Boulevard went up for sale, they couldn’t resist. The Hantoots yearned for a local shop, not unlike Dinosaur, with good coffee and a sense of community. “The person who was going to buy it was going to tear it down and build medical offices, but David, who sold it to us, chose us because he loved the building and wanted to preserve it,” Hantoot says.
How’s It Going To End? quietly opened in early April, but the project has been in the works for quite some time. Hantoot purchased the building in 2020 during the pandemic when everything was still uncertain, hence the name — which is also a reference to the Jim Carey movie The Truman Show. “Our saving grace during that time, when it was hard to be connected, was being outside and being connected to nature,” says Hantoot. After the two years it took to acquire the necessary permits, she hired Terremoto to do site-specific landscaping and wrk_shp to oversee the interior design, including a coffee bar inspired by the Japanese tea house at nearby Descanso Gardens. Hantoot also hired Matthew Chavarria, a former Dinosaur employee and a co-founder of the pop-up Footwork Coffee Service, to help dial in the service, the coffee, and the vibe, and to manage the day-to-day of the shop.
Now, two months in, How’s It Going To End? is open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily, serving a straightforward menu of espresso drinks, drip coffee, cold brew, and pastries. They steep Song tea and make chai in-house, as well as a few sodas and shrubs. There are no drinks designed to go viral or items that are overly complicated to make. “I like Americanos, and I think most people just want Americanos,” says Chavarria. “I like whipped cream,” adds Hantoot. “So the menu is coffee and fatty treats,” Chavarria sums it up. For now, Friends & Family supplies the pastries, but soon, Molly Donnellon, a pastry chef whose resume includes Fat + Flour and Quarter Sheets (and who is a collaborator of Chavarria’s in Footwork Coffee Service) will step up to the plate with cakes, cookies, tarts, granola, and a sandwich or two.
As is typical of a coffee shop, there’s a mix of people ordering coffees to-go, working on laptops, and meeting friends on any given day at How’s It Going To End? But underneath the surface, Hantoot and Chavarria harbor a thoughtful approach to hospitality that makes the experience unique. You’ll notice it in the details, like being offered a glass of complimentary still or sparkling water after you’ve ordered a coffee.
Hantoot began her career in restaurant kitchens, first in Boston at the acclaimed Spanish restaurant Toro and then working for the Hillstone Group, which brought her to Los Angeles to manage R+D Kitchen in Santa Monica. Afterwards she landed across the street at Caffe Luxxe. “I really fell in love with the format of being able to interact with everyone in such a short period of time,” she says. “You see people for five minutes every day, instead of it being a monthly thing, or once a quarter, like in a restaurant. That’s the cool thing to me about a coffee shop.” In 2014, she opened Dinosaur with the intention of whimsy and approachability in response to the overly serious coffee culture that had become pervasive amongst third-wave coffee shops.
Chavarria started working at Dinosaur in 2015, then left after Hantoot sold it, and went on to rise the ranks within L.A.’s restaurant scene. He worked at Today Starts Here, Pine & Crane’s now-defunct breakfast spot, began learning about wine as a server at Filipino rotisserie Lasita, then leveled up at the wine bar Voodoo Vin, all the while popping up around town to sling coffee and pastries with Footwork Coffee Service. When Hantoot called him to say she bought a building in Montrose and wanted him to run her next coffee shop, it felt like the right opportunity to fuse everything he’d learned since Dinosaur, not just about coffee, but about hospitality, too.
“My favorite restaurant experiences are at places like Houston’s, where they give you a fresh cold martini glass [when you’re halfway through your drink], or at In-N-Out, where I’ve never seen one kid flustered or give attitude. They’re just working hard, and they’re pleasant to be around,” says Chavarria. “I want that here, but in a coffee parlor.” When he and Hantoot talk about service, they don’t talk about other coffee shops. Instead, they talk about Houston’s, In-N-Out, and Langer’s, where “they’re passing the ball,” says Hantoot. “It’s like a three-man weave,” jokes Chavarria.
“My favorite restaurant experiences are at places like Houston’s, where they give you a fresh cold martini glass [when you’re halfway through your drink], or at In-N-Out, where I’ve never seen one kid flustered or give attitude. They’re just working hard, and they’re pleasant to be around. I want that here, but in a coffee parlor.”
Competition is healthy amongst coffee shops in Los Angeles these days. In the last two months alone, Camel Coffee from Seoul, the Berlin import Concierge Coffee, and Loop Espresso Club opened their doors in Los Feliz, the Arts District, and Eagle Rock, respectively. In addition to mainstays like endorffeine, Kumquat, and Maru, each coffee shop tends to cater to specific desires, as Chavarria points out, whether that be an amazing cup of coffee, a Tokyo listening bar experience, or some special version of a cream top. How’s It Going To End?, on the other hand, hopes to be a great version of an everyday coffee shop where human connection is paramount. The playlist is hand-curated, not generated by Spotify. The staff are amiable, not robotic. The environment is peaceful, not hectic. And the space, roomy and sunlit, is conducive to collaboration. Chavarria aspires to invite local pastry chefs to hold residencies and host weekend pop-ups (recently, Mendy’s Bagels was at the shop) to become something of a cultural hub. “The goal is for it not to be static,” says Hantoot.
According to Hantoot, 90% of customers at How’s It Going To End? order their coffees to stay, a shocking statistic for a coffee shop in 2024. “It being Montrose, it’s kind of a destination because most people don’t live up here,” says Chavarria. “So you kind of have to make an effort to come, but then you get rewarded by a place to hang out, be, and stay.”
Great space, great people 🤍