Emma Chamberlain on Building Her Coffee Company’s First Storefront and Her Social Media Hiatus: ‘The Internet Has Caused a Lot of Psychological Challenges’

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Emma Chamberlain’s months-long hiatus from the internet is not because she’s “disappearing and being fucking lazy.” More importantly, it’s not forever.

“I don’t want to continue living like this necessarily, where I’m pretty offline,” Chamberlain tells Variety. “I want to create things. I want to figure out a way to do this job in a way that is mentally healthy, and I do believe I can figure it out.”

For the past six years this has looked like her building her first company Chamberlain Coffee, a DTC mail-order brand that this past May finally opened its first brick-and-mortar storefront. The Los Angeles-based cafe, which has been in progress since the company’s founding, finally exists in a “way that truly embodies what I have always dreamed a cafe of mine would,” Chamberlain says.

“From interiors to the dynamic with the baristas to the team that we built around it, everything about it, even the location, everything about it,” Chamberlain says. “We took our time. My God, did we? But that can be worth it because if you do that, it can become what you’ve always wanted it to be.”

It didn’t take long for her to realize that tying the company’s success to her personal prominence was also unsustainable and potentially damaging. The “beautiful” balance she’s established with the brand while “building the boat as I’m sailing it” is to be involved casually without needing her, the founder, at the forefront of every campaign.

Now that the cafe is up and running, she can proudly decrease her involvement. She acknowledges that as founder and company namesake, it doesn’t “necessarily make sense for me to be completely invisible,” but “if the cafe is as amazing as I want it to be, it will promote itself to an extent.”

Now, Chamberlain Coffee has launched its second collaboration with Pinterest with the Pinterest Predicts 2026 trend “Wilderkind.” Inspired by the trend’s focus on nature, whimsy and outdoor connection, the collection features an almond-flavored blend, blueberry syrup and a woodland-themed mug and picnic blanket.

As a longtime user of Pinterest and a renown predictor of trends, this collaboration was very “organic,” even “wholesome” for Chamberlain, especially amidst her tumultuous relationship with social media.

“Pinterest is one of the few things that I can participate in as a consumer healthily, and it really does come down to inspiring you to go out into the real world,” Chamberlain says. “It’s a platform rooted in creativity and creation and self-expression and all these things. It’s algorithmically built to inspire you to make stuff.”

But diving headfirst into her entrepreneurial ventures also means going quiet online. In April, she announced she’d be taking an indefinite break from her long-running podcast “Anything Goes” and as any long-time fan will know, hasn’t posted a Youtube vlog, the kind that catapulted her to fame in 2017, in years.

“As much as [the internet] has been the greatest blessing of my life, it’s also caused a lot of psychological challenges if I’m being honest,” the 25 year-old creator says. “I’m really trying to handle that in the best possible way. I’m trying to face it head on.”

While Chamberlain’s internet presence is widely missed, a whole generation of content creators who look to her as the blueprint have taken over the space in the interim. “The cool thing about the internet is that anyone can do it,” she says.

The not-so-cool thing about the internet is that its overcrowded. For Chamberlain, the pressure she feels to constantly create mirrors the fatigue audiences feel from constant consumption. Our current media market isn’t sustainable for either party, she says, and she senses a major shift coming in the near future.

“When there’s so much content, it’s like “How do you add to that pile and do it in a positive way?’ when ultimately, what we need people to probably do is not consume any more content.”

Chamberlain is quietly preparing for this potential shift, analyzing how she can be a part of the entertainment landscape in a meaningful way. Until then, she doesn’t want to contribute unless it resonates with both her and her audience. Rest assured, she’ll be back. Eventually. In the meantime, she will continue her year of peace and healing, navigating how to healthily exist in the public eye.

“I don’t think being a public figure is natural,” Chamberlain says. “It’s not a very healthy thing by nature, but I will crack the code and then I will share the code with everyone I know and we will find a way.”