Lofty Coffee

Lofty decided in 2014 that it would rather be a roaster and a baker than buy from either, which is a great deal of extra work for a company that already had a cafe running. The board prints no origin at all for the manual brew, only an instruction to ask what is seasonal, which puts the most interesting thing on the menu behind a conversation at the counter.

The coffee comes from the company's own Roasting Works up the coast rather than from this building, off a sourcing list of farms, co-ops and importers it picks for itself. Here that means a seasonal single-origin espresso and a single-origin nitro on the board, while the retail bags run Colombia Luminosa V2 in natural and washed beside house blends, none of them naming a farm or a varietal.

Edinger Design drew this one with the founder, and the San Diego Architectural Foundation gave the result an Orchid. It comes in two sections, one half covered and the other closer to fully covered, sitting raised above the street so the seating looks down on an active corner instead of across at it.