In the parking lot off North Hancock Avenue sits a tiny house.

The paneled walls are painted in a rusty red and matching open shutters. On the patio, flowers hang from planters around a small bench.

Inside, baristas are crafting caffeinated concoctions. Welcome to Tiny House Coffee, an aptly named cafe in Colorado Springs.

Owned by local flight attendant Kanzetta Johnson, the drive-thru coffee shop operates out of a tiny home. Johnson opened the spot two years ago, inspired by the small drive-thru coffee houses she grew up around and worked in while living in Alaska.

Johnson happened upon the coffee house by chance while browsing Facebook Marketplace. She spotted the tiny home, which was already fully equipped with espresso machines, a functional cafe kitchen and inventory. She messaged the man selling it, and found out his ex-wife and he had made it together but things didn’t work out.

“I got to chatting with him, and it turns out that he is from Alaska too,” said Johnson, who has worked as a barista for more than a decade. “He’s like, ‘I want you to have this because I think you all have the same kind of vision that my wife and I intended to have.’ I was like, ‘I want it too,’ so we kind of just worked out, and it all fell into place.”

With the mobile cafe in tow, now Johnson needed to find a location to plant it. She became interested in the large parking lot of the Venetian Village strip mall, just down the road from her house. With permission from the lot’s owner, she was in business — a lot quicker than she expected, Johnson said.

The little coffee house has become a local staple to the community, with many regulars stopping by throughout the week. That’s Johnson’s favorite part about owning a small business: meeting neighbors and creating community. She even admits to having a favorite customer.

“He came through right when I opened and he was 2 days old,” Johnson said. “They’ve been my regulars ever since. I see them multiple times a week. I’ve gone to his birthday parties. He just turned 2. The coffee shop just turned 2. He comes and gets his little ‘coffees.’ Now, he’s my favorite.”

While the house is just as small as it was at the start, the business has grown quite a bit. It used to just be Johnson manning the station, but now she employs five baristas, including Ivory Businelle. In the couple of months Businelle has been working at the shop, she’s created a significant TikTok page highlighting Tiny House Coffee, with several clips going viral. Since the page’s creation in April, the shop has had five TikToks receive more than 100,000 views, including two videos with over 190,000 and one with more than 311,000.

“Even before I worked here, I saw these cute barista videos and cute coffee shop videos and I was like, ‘I want to do that,’” Businelle said. “We’re getting business from it. It’s amazing, it went way better than I expected.”

The most popular offering at the shop is its Red Bull specials, Johnson said. These drinks are made with Red Bull over ice, mixed with a flavor of the customer’s choosing.

“I like mine with coconut milk on top, which people think is weird, but it’s so good,” Johnson chuckled.

There’s also plenty of coffee to go around, including the ever-popular white espresso, Johnson said. The shop’s power protein latte is another customer favorite as a caffeinated protein shake with shots of espresso, collagen and cold foam on top (oh, and it’s completely sugar-free).

The coffee bar works to be transparent about its ingredients, which is important to Johnson. She knows picking up a coffee is a luxury, so she wants to make the experience worth it.

The shop works with several local businesses to provide food items, including pastries from Early Bird Bakery, dog treats from Happy Hounds and fresh breakfast burritos from Rock City Cafe. Even the flowers hanging on the patio are gifts from a local greenhouse.

“We like to intermingle with the community a lot, and we get a lot of good feedback from that,” she said.

Though many customers like to hang out at the shop during the summer, by far the busiest time of year for them is October, Johnson said, because it’s located right next to Hellscream Haunted House.

By far, the most important part of the shop to Johnson is the people — its what’s kept her in the business for so long.

“This just makes me so happy,” she said. “When I opened it, I wanted regulars. I like knowing about your neighbor’s sister’s, dog. I like having the conversations. I like knowing that I’m gonna see like Brian from across the street every morning at 8:47 a.m. before he goes to work. I love that.”