Ulysses Romero, owner of South Gate’s Tierra Mia Coffee Co., hopes to open more shops by surpassing Starbucks on quality and offering Latin-inspired drinks.

The Stanford MBA graduate and former business consultant is pouring his energy and the knowledge picked up working for coffee retailers large and small into a concept he hopes can grow into multiple profitable locations.

His offerings recently caught the attention of Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic at the LA Weekly, who called the shop’s espressos “world class” in his short review and raved about the Cubano con leche, an espresso pulled into turbinado sugar and combined with steamed half-and-half.

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