Angie Lee opened Moona Moono in April, and the Asian-inspired “coffee shop and general store” on Hennepin Avenue has made Minneapolis cooler and Uptown less dead. Lee was global head of brand and marketing for Samsung Next when she noticed “pop culture and trends were moving not from west to east, but east to west.” She relocated from New York to Minneapolis, inspired by a mid-pandemic visit, and realized her dream of running a stationery store—except Moona Moono sells Korean beauty products, décor, and knickknacks, too, sourced largely from Asian and Asian American makers. Tariffs have been tricky, but her model is diverse: “You have coffee and retail and other streams of revenue that help balance and offset those risks.” For 2026, “I am really wanting to continue to get to know the community better. I’m going on my fourth year here, and yet I feel like I’m just, in the past six months, starting to understand the city and how it breathes and evolves.”