Key takeaway: Minnesota coffee shop creates viral raspberry Danish latte, gives world the recipe
For over a century, Minnesotans have defined Northfield by its cows and colleges. Now, the world is coming to know the leafy little city for its coffee.
Northfield’s own Little Joy Coffee shop has brewed itself onto the world map in recent weeks after inviting cafes and caffeine lovers everywhere to steal the recipe for its smash-hit raspberry Danish latte.
From Paris to Poznań, Malaysia to Morocco, it is a call that has been answered by an ever-growing list of establishments around the globe, and nobody anywhere is more surprised than the drink’s inventor.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘Okay, what if only like five people put this on their menu?’” Little Joy owner Cody Larson told CNN.
“I thought, at best, it would be maybe a dozen shops.”
That’s not to say Larson did not expect his creation to be well-received.
The popularity of previous carrot cake lattes and cardamom bun lattes at the coffee shop had proven his theory that dessert-inspired drinks are in the ascendancy. After weeks of toiling in the shop’s basement kitchen to complete the seasonal spring menu, he gave up on a mango sticky rice concoction and found inspiration in a flaky European delicacy.
Anchored by a raspberry syrup that mimics the filling often found in Danish pastries, the drink sees milk and a double shot of espresso splashed over ice before being topped with a cream cheese foam.
Rolled out in early March alongside a matcha-ginger beer creation and other iced specials, the raspberry Danish latte was an instant winner, even at an $8 price point.
“For a lot of people, that’s a lot,” Larson said. “When you can put something familiar on your menu, I feel like people are more willing to take a chance on it.
“That’s maybe why these drinks that are inspired by something else that people might know already are tending to do better right now.”
Around the world in 480 lattes
Publicly critiquing your own pricing may seem an odd ploy for most businesses, but for Little Joy it has helped build a 139,000-strong Instagram following that equates to roughly six times the entire town’s population.
The shop’s recently launched “DIY or Buy” social media series is an evolution of its long-running approach to freely giving recipes away online, whereby store manager Serena Walker delivers judgement on whether viewers would be better off making the chosen drink at home — all in her own nonchalant, occasionally profane, Gen Z style.
“We hardly have to script anything — she’s just got it,” said Larson.
The raspberry Danish verdict? Though coming in cheap at $2.46 homemade, “too many dishes, and you’re gonna stain your white clothes,” Walker concluded, before inviting all coffee shops watching to “steal” the recipe for themselves, even pointing viewers toward a link that explained how to produce the drink at scale.
Coca-Cola or KFC will surely never give up the formula behind their greatest hits, so why has Little Joy Coffee? Larson’s take is that exclusivity, at least as a marketing ploy, is “dead.”
“People are shown so much stuff online that’s out of reach for them, that when something finally is in reach, they’re just happy to be a part of it,” he explained.
“By sharing the recipe with all coffee shops, we made it within reach, got it off the screen into the real world, which is a gap a lot of people are trying to bridge right now. We’re on our phone so much, we see so much on the screen — let’s bring that into real life.”
Little Joy decided to support the businesses willing to take the pulp-straining plunge, by helping potential customers find them. It created a world map that tagged every outlet that had added the raspberry Danish to its menu.
Since launching on March 21, the map has been viewed more than 3 million times, with pins popping up at more than 480 shops across 41 countries spanning every continent bar the one where a lack of demand for anything iced is entirely understandable: Antarctica.
Even some 17,000 kilometers (10,500 miles) away in Perth, Australia — the farthest major city from Northfield — three cafes now boast a raspberry Danish latte. One of them is Ashby Coffee House, whose matcha and classic iced latte variations have been met by glowing reviews.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” manager Asha Fisher told CNN. “It’s safe to say this seasonal special has been a standout.”
Cows, colleges, community, coffee
Inundated with messages thanking Little Joy for a boost in business, Larson has reveled in supporting the local economies of communities that will, most likely, never have heard of his hometown.
The population of Northfield, many of whom study at one of the two private liberal arts colleges, Carleton and St. Olaf, are basking in it too — residents have thanked the shop for “putting Northfield on the map,” Larson said.
It’s been a century and a half since Northfield has garnered such widespread attention. Any local could tell you the story of September 7, 1876, when Jesse James’ infamous band of outlaws sauntered up Division Street to rob the First National Bank, only to fail miserably and flee empty-handed in a cloud of gun smoke, triggering the largest manhunt in US history at the time.
Like the Defeat of Jesse James Days festival staged each summer, it’s an exciting turn of events for the residents living in the shadow of the bustling metropolitan area that forms the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, 45 miles to the north.
Oft compared to the charming fictional town that provides the setting for “Gilmore Girls,” the spirit of close-knit community that defined Stars Hollow is ever-present in Northfield, says Larson, who sees it embodied in one particular customer who Little Joy Coffee has served “every day” since it first opened its doors in 2019.
It’s a community that, like so many across the state, has endured a turbulent start to 2026. The impact of the 74-day long Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, described by the Department of Homeland Security as its “largest ever” immigration operation, was felt beyond the confines of the Twin Cities before it ended in mid-February.
“The bakery where we get our pastries from closed down because they were afraid. The workers were afraid to go to work,” Larson recalled.
“It wasn’t some far off thing, it was happening in our community.”
That was the primary reason Little Joy bucked calls to not “get political” or “stick to making silly little coffee videos,” they explained in a January post. The shop joined other businesses in closing as part of an “economic blackout” on January 23 to boycott the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, before hosting an “Open for Community” event a week later that raised money for mutual aid funds.
“I think it’s important as a business to kind of put your foot down and tell your customers where you stand, because they want that,” Larson explained. “Customers want to know where they’re spending their money.”
In 2024, Northfield City Council tweaked its longtime slogan of “Cows, Colleges and Contentment,” switching the final word out for “Community” but urging locals to drop in other alternatives beginning with “C” where appropriate. If Little Joy can sustain its international and local success, the case for adding “Coffee” would surely be as strong as any other.
“Right now, we’re just trying to make the drinks as fast as we can, and it’s not slowing down yet,” said Larson, who has been able to give his staff a raise off the back of the recent interest.
“We’re going to keep making our silly little coffee videos, sharing recipes and not gatekeeping.”
