San Francisco coffee guide: the city that roasts for itself

San Francisco roasts its own coffee. All nine coffee shops in this guide are run by roasters, and six roast inside the city: Ritual on a 1950s Probat in SoMa, Sightglass in a 1914 warehouse nearby, Four Barrel in the Mission, Linea in Potrero Hill, Andytown in the Outer Sunset and Réveille in Mission Bay. The scene is old by specialty standards: Ritual opened in 2005, Grand in 2010, and the founder of Wrecking Ball is credited with coining the term “third wave coffee”. The cafés run from the Financial District and North Beach to the fog of the Outer Sunset.

Ritual Coffee Roasters, the Mission and Hayes Valley

Ritual Coffee Roasters was founded in 2005 by Eileen Rinaldi, who opened a shop dedicated solely to coffee in a former furniture store in the Mission; by its third day the line reached the corner. Ritual began roasting at the back of the café in 2006, opened a roastery and training centre in SoMa in 2009, and in 2010 moved to a retrofitted 1950s Probat UG-22. It pays two to three times the commodity price to smallholder farmers it knows, and since 2019 its single origins have been roasted as “omniroast” for espresso and drip alike. “The Container” in Hayes Valley is a coffee bar in a shipping container at PROXY, there is a café at SFO, and a Financial District café is planned.

Sightglass Coffee, SoMa, the Mission and Divisadero

Sightglass Coffee began in 2009 with a service cart, a few Chemex pots and a leaky vintage espresso machine behind the roll-up door of a 1914 warehouse in SoMa. Two years later the whole warehouse became its roastery, coffee bar and headquarters, named after the viewing window on its vintage Probat. The flagship has an open floor plan, so guests watch roasting from the bar, and the lab holds a public tasting every Friday. The Mission bar sits under a ceiling of reclaimed redwood, and the Divisadero bar occupies a 1903 corner Victorian. Sightglass also roasts in Hollywood and has a café facing UC Berkeley.

Four Barrel Coffee, the Mission

Four Barrel Coffee is an independent, locally owned roastery in the Mission that sources almost all of its coffee directly from farmers and mill workers in Latin America, Indonesia and East Africa, and spends months of the year at origin. It roasts in San Francisco on a vintage German roaster, with airflow controlled by hand and trained people rather than computers in charge. Besides its own café it is a partner in The Mill on Divisadero, and it sells the de la Paz blends and runs coffee classes.

Linea Caffe, Potrero Hill and the Mission

Linea Caffe was founded in 2013 by the roaster Andrew Barnett, whose work centres on sweetness-forward coffee and espresso; the name is Italian for “line”, after the throughline from seedling to cup. In 2023 it became a Certified B Corporation and moved its entire inventory to certified organic, and in 2025 New York Times Wirecutter called a Linea cup “possibly the most elegant and balanced cup of coffee” its reviewer had tasted. Linea roasts at its roastery and café in Potrero Hill and runs two cafés in the Mission, one by Dolores Park, pouring drip, espresso, a shakerato and a salted maple latte.

Andytown Coffee Roasters, the Outer Sunset and downtown

Andytown Coffee Roasters was founded in 2014 by baristas Michael McCrory and Lauren Crabbe, who started in a 600-square-foot room in the Outer Sunset. They wanted it to feel like an Irish granny’s kitchen, and the bakery is a tribute to McCrory’s Belfast: soda farls baked daily at the original café, wheaten bread, scones and sausage rolls with HP sauce. Andytown roasts in small batches at its Outer Sunset roastery and now has cafés across the city, from the original and a beach café in the Outer Sunset to a flagship on the rooftop park of the Transbay Terminal, another in the Financial District and a kiosk in Jackson Square. It is a certified women-owned business.

Saint Frank Coffee, Russian Hill, the East Cut and the Inner Sunset

Saint Frank Coffee is named for the city and for Saint Francis, who “showed all things seemingly mundane and ordinary to be special”. Kevin Bohlin founded it in 2013. Saint Frank buys only through long-term relationships with small producers and looks for places “largely undesired and avoided for risk, lack of recognition, and costliness”, from Honduras to Burundi, where it partnered with the Long Miles Coffee Project on a washing station at Ninga. It roasts in-house, and its blends carry Franciscan names: Little Brother, Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Friar Minor. The cafés are in Russian Hill, at Mira in the East Cut and in the Inner Sunset, with a fourth in Menlo Park.

Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, Cow Hollow

Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters was founded in 2011 by Trish Rothgeb, a roaster, green buyer and teacher with more than 30 years in coffee who is credited with coining the term “third wave coffee”. She is a licensed Q grader and Q trainer and was a charter member of the World Barista Championship board. The café in Cow Hollow is a full-service room with espresso drinks, brewed coffee, matcha lattes and Rifle Paper Co. wallpaper. The coffee is roasted on Tuesdays and Fridays: the Pillow Fight espresso of Brazil, Ethiopia and Colombia, its decaf twin, the Triple Double blend, and single origins such as Concepción Villatoro’s Los Dos Socios from Huehuetenango.

Réveille Coffee Co., Mission Bay, North Beach and four more

Réveille Coffee Co. grew from a single coffee truck in Jackson Square into five San Francisco cafés and one in Berkeley. The roasting headquarters is the Mission Bay café, where visitors can watch the German-made Probat, and its head roaster has travelled to farms to learn how they work. The retail coffees are named single origins, among them a Wush Wush from Jhonatan Gasca’s Finca Zarza in Huila. The first bricks-and-mortar café is in North Beach, with City Lights Bookstore out of one window and the Zoetrope building out of the other, and there are cafés in Russian Hill, with a weekend brunch, in the Lower Haight near Duboce Park and in the Marina. None takes reservations.

Grand Coffee, the Mission

Grand Coffee has served the Mission since 2010, when Nabeel Silmi opened it on the idea that good coffee should be a shared experience. By its own account it is “the unofficial living room for the block”, where artists, service workers, long-time residents and newcomers meet on the same pavement. There are two cafés in the Mission, Grand Coffee “OG” and Grand Coffee “Too”, the original behind a red-tiled frontage with an order window onto the street. Grand roasts its own blends: Las Pilas, a “bold and bass-y” espresso; La Llave, which gives a dollar from every bag to humanitarian aid in the Middle East; Lights On, roasted dark; and the Mild Child decaf. The single origins favour emerging producers, such as Stiven Hoyos’s pink bourbon from Huila and the Chiapas Women’s Harvest from 168 women-owned farms.

What you need to know about San Francisco specialty coffee

Which San Francisco coffee shops roast their own coffee? All nine. Ritual roasts in SoMa, Sightglass in its SoMa warehouse and in Hollywood, Four Barrel in the Mission, Linea in Potrero Hill, Andytown in the Outer Sunset, Réveille in Mission Bay, and Grand, Saint Frank and Wrecking Ball roast their own too.

Where can you watch the roasting? At the Sightglass flagship in SoMa, where the floor is open from the bar to the roaster, and at the Réveille café in Mission Bay, where the Probat runs in view of the room.

Which cafés are near downtown? Andytown has a flagship on the rooftop park of the Transbay Terminal and another in the Financial District, Saint Frank is at Mira in the East Cut, Réveille is in North Beach, and Ritual has a Financial District café planned.

Where is the food? Andytown bakes Northern Irish soda farls, wheaten bread and scones, and Réveille’s cafés have full kitchens, with a weekend brunch in Russian Hill.

Which coffees are organic? Linea’s entire inventory has been certified organic since 2023.