The Map
Four Quadrants
Crisp & Clean. Bright & Fruity. Friendly & Round. Deep & Complex.
Every coffee has a spot on two lines: syrupy to lively for how it feels in your mouth, classic to modern for its style. The spot comes from cupping it. Nayarit Natural from El Cuarenteño in Mexico sits in Friendly & Round, golden apple, pistachio cream, brown sugar. Coffees get bought for a corner, the best of them complex enough to hold two, and all four corners stay filled. From there it runs as a loop: roasted in City Heights, brewed at our bar, in partner shops and at home, and what gets poured and bought in each corner shapes the next buy.
The Producers Art
The Producers
Same People, more coffee.
Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Peru. Every lot comes from those eight countries. Edwin Martinez since 2004, Francisca Cubillo and Oscar Chacón since 2009, Jhoan Vergara since 2025, with BomBón in Bright & Fruity and San Augustine in Friendly & Round. Classic or modern gets settled on their farms, in the varietal, the picking and the process. Once a partner is in, the plan is more of their coffee every year, and new coffees from them when another corner needs filling.
The Roasters Craft
The Roast
One green, two cups.
Every coffee gets its own profile, and every profile stops where the sugars are fully developed, before caramelization burns them off. Underdeveloped coffee tastes green, sour and thin, so we don't roast that way. Some greens get a second profile. Core is the everyday version. Plus stretches the browning stage and pushes the syrupy side forward with the same sweetness, the only direction a roast can move a coffee. Many lots get bought with both profiles in mind, and the production roast confirms it. BomBón is pineapple candy, lychee lollipop, pink guava. BomBón plus, same green, is pineapple candy, lychee cream, Cocoa Puffs.
Brewing Science
The Cup
The last set of decisions.
Grind, water, ratio, temperature and time belong to whoever is brewing: the crew at our bar on El Cajon Boulevard, Relic Bakery, Cala, La Clochette, Best Coffee and Nosh Box, and you at your own counter. Every bag is roasted to order, seven days a week, and drinks best 7 to 25 days off roast.
Compositions
The Drops
One Drop in every corner.
Honey Drop in Crisp & Clean, Gum Drop in Bright & Fruity, Cocoa Drop in Friendly & Round, Dark Drop in Deep & Complex. Each one is composed to hold its corner and its three notes while the coffees inside change with the harvests, every lot on its own profile, arranged by percentage, cupped as a finished coffee. Cocoa Drop is milk chocolate, apples and caramel, from El Cuarenteño in Mexico, the Dumont Alvarez family in El Salvador and Negusse Debela in Ethiopia. Next quarter it might lean more chocolate and less apple, and it will still be all three. Start with a Drop to learn what a corner tastes like, then go exploring.
Every price here starts from what origin was paid.How Proportional Pricing works