about

Hi! I’m Kimberly, and I am so excited to share my love of coffee with you!  My earliest memories of coffee are of waking up to the smell of  brewing a cup of the stuff from the red can, my dad’s favorite, which he would add hazelnut creamer to and enjoy every morning.  I didn’t have any interest in coffee until I got to college.  I started drinking coffee out of necessity, for late night study sessions.  I went on to be a pharmacist, and started to bake cakes and desserts as a side hobby with my twin sister, under the name of Twinkle Bakery.  We did some fun things (find us on Netflix’s Sugar Rush! or Bake it like Buddy on Discovery+) and got to bake for a lot of our family and friends’ special occasions.  The one thing I have always loved to bake are my homemade ube rolls (brioche rolls filled with purple yam jam)- they pair perfectly with coffee! 

My personal love for coffee started out with an obsession with latte art.  I was determined to pour the perfect heart, which proved to be much more difficult than I had ever imagined.  Slowly, as I poured latte after latte, my curiosity about the coffee beans I was extracting from grew.  I started asking, is coffee from the Philippines “a thing?”.  They MUST grow coffee there.  Through research I discovered that the Philippines was once the fourth largest exporter of coffee.   The more I read about coffee from the Philippines, the more I knew I wanted to bring it here to the US.  I am lucky to call a lot of the Filipinx chefs and bakers in the DMV my friends, and I thought coffee would be the perfect compliment to their bakeries and restaurants. 

Sun & Stars represents a dream I’ve always had.  To find a passion that would connect my love for food and family with my culture and heritage. It pays homage to the sun and stars that are on the Philippine flag, as well as the stars in the American flag.  It is a small tribute to Twinkle Bakery, the passion project my twin sister and I worked on together that connected us to so many wonderful people, especially those in the food industry.  It is a realization of everything in my life finally aligning and making sense.  It represents the spark that I felt when I knew that this was “the thing” I just “had” to do with my life.  I can’t wait to share this special coffee with you!