House of Black Coffee Company East Village
Occupying the locale that formerly hosted Bean Bar, North County coffee business House of Black Coffee Company opened their East Village locale in September 2020.
Coffee hobbyists Andy Itaya, Travis Ford, and Jim Sanford started selling home-roasted coffee beans at the Scripps Ranch Farmers Market in 2017. A year later, they took over a juice shop on Poway Road, Sabre Springs, formalizing their business around the idea that fresh, carefully sourced coffee is best appreciated when taken black: without creamer or sweetener.
Hob coffee does furnish both for guests, of course, and serves specialty drinks ranging from an agave cinnamon espresso to a vanilla raspberry latte. Both its shops feature gadgety nitro taps that operate without tanks; they pull nitrogen out of the air to infuse the brew with fine bubbles, which open up cold brew’s rounded and less acidic coffee flavors, while lending a fuller-bodied, creamy texture.
They use a Bellwether Roaster, a fully automated electric roasting machine that yields zero emissions, and may be operated with an iPad. Bellwether even offers curated roasting profiles that may be fine-tuned on site, then used to produce consistent results with every batch, regardless who’s cooking.