Emily Shum
“With a background in design and fashion, I built a specialty café, wine bar & multi-use creative venue concept mid-pandemic partnering with hundreds of brands, businesses and artists.”
Best for founders building cafes, food concepts, retail hybrids, or creative spaces rooted in storytelling, culture, and community.
What I've Built
Land to Sea
Specialty Café, Wine Bar & Creative Venue
Specialty, self-roasted coffee and Cantonese/Chinese pastries up front. Over 80 events produced annually with partners including Nike, Audible, and Penguin Random House. Featured by Beli, Eater, and Infatuation.
About
I grew up in Brooklyn, exposed to food & beverage since early childhood at my grandfather's Chino-Latino restaurant in Williamsburg. I graduated from FIT and began working in product merchandising and design for brands like Balenciaga, Burberry and Supreme New York. After spending years immersed in fashion, art, culture, and hospitality, I combined all those experiences to create Land to Sea in 2021 with my co-founder, Eva, crowdfunding $35k to help open the café. Our coffee, tea and pastry program is deeply inspired by our founders' heritage — offering specialty, self-roasted local coffee alongside a Cantonese/Chinese pastry selection. Bespoke and signature beverage offerings have placed Land to Sea on must-go coffee/tea destination lists by food publications like Beli, Eater, Infatuation and more. At the same time, we've created meaningful cultural and creative convenings — producing over 80 events annually and partnering with brands like Nike, Audible, Penguin Random House, as well as hundreds of small businesses, artists, and creators across New York City and beyond. We offer a full-scale event production and partnerships team, producing events like: mahjong nights, artist panels, incense making workshops, kimchi making workshops, speed dating — to name a few. I've spent 5+ years growing and building a café that functions as a "community living room". If you're launching a café concept and approaching your concept from a creative angle, trying to figure out how to implement new revenue streams into your existing business, or just trying to make sense of where the money is actually going, I've done it all.
Examples of decisions Emily can help you work through
Opening without a playbook
- Launching a cafe or hospitality concept without a traditional playbook
- Funding a build-out from scratch
- Running the operation with a small team
Brand, story, and community
- Turning a brand story into real foot traffic
- Building a space rooted in culture, identity, or community
- Using events and programming to create repeat visits
Product, programming, and partnerships
- Developing a product or menu point of view across cultures
- Adding revenue lines like wine, retail, events, or partnerships
- Making programming support the business, not distract from it
Tell us what you're working through and we'll confirm Emily is the right fit.
Work with Emily
Decision Session
$15060 minutes
A focused 60-minute conversation around one decision, question, or operating situation.
Share a short brief so Emily arrives prepared.
Decision Sprint
$750Three sessions over 4 to 6 weeks
Emily reviews your materials between sessions, sends a written recap after each, and closes with a decision memo.
Most owners book this after a first session.
If your first session is not useful, we refund the entire sprint.
Booked a session in the last 7 days? It counts as session one and its full price is credited.
These are focused operator calls. Implementation or ongoing support can be scoped separately.
Project or Fractional
For hands-on work beyond the session, recurring guidance, or an ongoing operating role.
Additional sessions can be booked as needed.