Mostra Coffee

Two of the founders worked it out while volunteering to build houses in the Philippines: the help that lasts is a farmer paid properly for the crop already in the ground, and the crop happened to be coffee. Mostra has brought specialty-grade Philippine coffee to market since 2015, and a cut of every retail bag still goes back to the growers for infrastructure and schooling, which is slower than writing a check and the reason there is a company here at all.

Everything is roasted in-house on two San Franciscan machines named Feli and Franny, which get a full tear-down once or twice a month, and the retail lots come named to the farm: a Caturra off Fabian Acevedo's family plot in Providencia de Geshua, high in Colombia's Huila, at roughly 1,750 meters. The filter option at this counter is a daily batch rather than a manual brew.

William Hezmalhalch Architects drew this 1,247-square-foot suite as an English Industrial room meant to mimic the quality and process of Mostra's own operation. The espresso machine is a Mavam sunk into a lower bar top, the only one in San Diego when this room was new, and a bar dropped that low turns the espresso work into something the room can watch.