The first cafe space for Indonesian coffee roaster Beaneka Coffee Roastery is home to Firebrand pastries, a delightful and warm service staff, and some of the rarest coffee drinks in the Bay Area. That’s because until now, SanDai in Walnut Creek’s Kopi Bar was the only dedicated place for avocado and chocolate coffee drinks. Now, steps from the San Francisco Bay, grab an iced pandan coffee and nastar (pineapple shortbread) to enjoy while you take in the sights.

Wrecking Ball’s Trish Rothgeb is known for her well-balanced espresso drinks and precise, technologically advanced pour-overs — plus, she coined the now popular “waves of coffee” terminology. The Berkeley location of her business closed, so the Cow Hollow outpost will have to be as great as two coffee shops.

Saint Frank is to San Francisco coffee as Dungeness crab is to San Francisco restaurants: when the time is right in the city, nothing else will do. Owner and founder Kevin Bohlin’s been on a spree, too, as he opened choux paradise Juniper on Polk Street in 2023 and a second San Francisco Saint Frank location in SoMa. Longtime fans return for the gorgeous service, minimal aesthetic, and tea-like Bolivian coffees.

When Not Latte hit Irving Street in spring 2022, it marked the arrive of one of the city’s first dedicated fruit coffee shops. Now, as coffee continues to find imaginative and wonderful iterations, Outset on Valencia and New Montgomery streets takes the form to the next level. The Sunset Americano, a medley of Ethiopian coffee and grapefruit and orange juices, is not a creamy latte but a delicate, multi-textural drink unlike anything else in the city. And, gratefully, caffeinating, to boot.

The Scullery is a little nook of a coffee shop with a smattering of outdoor seating, and the thrum of traffic booming on Geary Street outside. The team at this cafe is tuned into the specialty coffee world, serving East Bay favorite Mother Tongue Coffee and top-tier toast, too.

Sextant founder Kinani Ahmed works directly with Ethiopian, Kenyan, and Colombian growers, making high-end but affordable beans to-go. In this chunk of the city, Sextant is alone in offering terrific coffees and delicious pastries from Firebrand Artisan Breads.

This coffee shop on the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park is both a familiar favorite and a high-quality, fourth-wave business. That’s because founder and owner Aquiles Guerrero was born in Nicaragua before coming to the city in the 1980s where he worked at Martha & Bros Coffee Co. The business is expanding — across the street into a kiosk in the park and with a shop in the FiDi in late 2023 — and it’s the high-quality pour-overs and drippers that keep business booming.

Abanico Coffee Roasters brought specialty coffee drinks and freshly roasted beans to the Mission in 2021. Owner Ana Valle is originally from El Salvador, where she grew up sipping cafecito with her grandmother. Now she’s sweetening cafe con leche with condensed milk and dusting iced cafe de olla with cinnamon in this bright, airy space. 

Alex Pong’s Paper Son pop-up is a crowning achievement in the city’s vast coffee game, merging his Asian American heritage with his top-tier espresso and pour-over skills. The espresso passionfruit tonic is a bubbly love letter to the fruit notes coffee snobs love, and Paper Son’s riff on Thai iced tea, the Thai Tea Cloud, is as well-bodied an iteration as they come in San Francisco.

More than 11 years into its journey, Grand Coffee opened a second location a block away from its mini cafe on Mission Street. The shop also serves its coffee at the Grove at Yerba Buena and keeps customers buzzed during Ramadan. Next door to Alamo Drafthouse, the small businesses’ new shop is spacious and bright, and working through a two-person Chemex at the tiled bar is a delight.

Opened in June 2021 by Dee and their cat Boots, this Bayview shop has gained a loyal fanbase for items like the Hella Black toast on San Francisco bakery Rize Up’s bread and housemade orange marmalade. Plus, it bears repeating, the co-owner is a cat.

Ocean Avenue plays host to lots of fantastic restaurants and bars, but few destinations are as open, enormous, and affordable as Java on Ocean. The shop features tons of specialty drinks, and not specialty coffee, mind you, but items like rose, lavender, and zebra lattes.