Vigilante Coffee

Lil Red, the used three-kilo Diedrich the whole company was launched on, made the cross-country trip to fire the first roasts here. Simplicity was the design goal for the room, with the coffee as the main attraction, which takes some discipline in a beach town where the waves run three hundred days a year.

A twelve-kilo Loring nicknamed Silver Surfer does the roasting in the building, with green bought at origin auctions and through multi-year relationships with the farms. The retail shelf runs twenty-one coffees, most of them titled to country and lot, and the El Salvador black honey from Finca Las Veraneras comes listed by region, varietal and 1,750 meters of altitude, though not by roast date.

The building is a former college of beauty, 3,500 square feet with roughly 1,500 of it roastery and the rest a cafe seating about thirty, laid out so the roasting stays in view of the tables. Garage window doors slide up until the patio and the interior read as one room, and the bar is knotty wood paneling under a white wall carrying the company logo in black.