Dayglow

Tohm Ifergan came off the road as a drummer in From Indian Lakes to open a Silver Lake cafe with his cousin Philippe, and a trademark dispute over their original name, Neon, drained their startup cash before they had sold a single cup. He built the shop around what he had learned pulling shots at Portola Coffee's Theorem bar in Costa Mesa: that a customer sticks around longer for a story about the bean than for another flat white.

• Tasting flights
• Bean browsing
• A quick adventurous cup

Rotating roasters

Dayglow runs as a rotating multi-roaster bar, carrying beans from ten to twenty roasters at a time split roughly between domestic and international names, with staff blind-cupping new arrivals each week to decide what makes the list. Since 2022 the company also roasts its own coffee under the Dayglow name, so the Silver Lake counter now pours a mix of guest-roaster beans and Dayglow's own roast side by side.

A maximalist multi-roaster running up to twenty roasters at a time, which makes the filter selection the deepest on the Eastside.

Seating is minimal and the wall of bags does the decorating — color-saturated, rotating from Sey to La Cabra, and the reason to stand there a while rather than sit. Dayglow was shortlisted twice at the 2024 Sprudge Design Awards, for menu design and for seasonal packaging, and Anton Warkentin's packaging work ran on the SCA's design platform the same year.

The Silver Lake shop sits in a converted restaurant space the founders picked because it was cheap to build out, and it still reads that way: small, plant-filled, and lit with neon signage against a millennial-pink color scheme unique to this location. Bean bags line bright retail shelves on one wall and a tight run of cafe seating on another, with a patio out back that stays quieter than Sunset Boulevard traffic would suggest. The bar opened on a La Marzocco GS3 and Linea Mini on a shoestring budget, then Ifergan swapped in a Modbar system so the counter sits lower and staff can talk to customers across it instead of hiding behind a machine.

• neon signage
• millennial pink
• plant-filled
• small footprint
• patio seating
• retail bean wall
• Nordic-influenced