Bird Rock Coffee Roasters is now open in Pacific Beach. All photos by Haley Hill Photography, courtesy of Bird Rock Coffee Roasters.
Bird Rock Coffee Roastery continued its retail expansion this week, opening a modern location in San Diego’s Pacific Beach neighborhood. It’s the company’s fifth location and second opening since being acquired by Topeka, Kansas-based PT’s Coffee Roasting Co. at the beginning of 2017.
With ample indoor and outdoor space for guests, the newly renovated 1,100-square-foot cafe also incorporates garage door windows, which have become a signature element of Bird Rock’s retail spaces, while allowing lithe and ocean breezes to flow through the space. To achieve the tidy, beach-inspired design, Bird Rock commissioned San Diego-based interior design firm My Studio IDwho also worked on a location that opened this spring in Del Mar.
The cafe in the modern space is equipped with a silver Steam Killer X in combination with Mahlkonig Peak espresso grinder while Mahlkonig’s twin ground coffee once with 5-cup Poursteady system and brewing in batches with Curtis G4 Twin 1 gallon.
The expanded menu — currently available only at the Pacific Beach location — features baked goods and other specialties, such as sweet and savory toasts, homemade yogurt, Bostock (baked French toast), fresh focaccia bread, savory and sweet brioche tarts, and gluten-free muffins. Menu items are prepared in-house by professionally trained pastry chefs Justin Gaspar and Sean Le, who both attended the International Culinary Center in Northern California.
As a longtime practitioner of origin-oriented, “direct trade” sourcing, Bird Rock has found the kind of critical and local success that allows for expansion. The company has won numerous awards since opening in 2006, including 16 medals at the recent Golden Bean North America competition, Good Food Awards in 2016 and 2017 and Five Micro-roaster of the year according to the magazine award in 2012.
But when it comes to retail, all the awards in the world can’t compensate for outstanding people.
“We’ve had a really busy year, opening two modern stores and starting construction on another in the next few weeks,” Bird Rock co-owner Jeff Taylor told Daily Coffee News. “Our real focus has been building our outstanding team of coffee professionals and getting everyone in the right positions so we can grow the way we want.”
Bird Rock approaches future projects strategically and thoughtfully, balancing expansion potential with its own standards of quality and efficiency.
“First and foremost, quality must continue as we grow,” Taylor said. “And not just the quality of our coffee, but the quality of our food, our baked goods and our staff—from our roasting team to our baristas. If we can’t maintain the level of training we need, we will postpone any modern store openings. We don’t have a magic number of stores we want to open, we just want to deliver great coffee and baked goods whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. Our goal is to grow appropriately while creating opportunities for our exceptional team of coffee professionals.”
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters is now open 829 Garnet Ave in Pacific Beach, San Diego.
Lily Kubota
Lily Kubota is a Managing Editor and Digital Content Manager at Roast Magazine, based in Southern California.
