Berkeley’s workforce and student masses just got a new place to recaffeinate – Sightglass Coffee, which opened in May right across from the UC Berkeley campus.
Sightglass is a San Francisco-born company known for small-batch roasting and sourcing green coffee beans from distinctive global producers. The Berkeley cafe is its first opening in the Bay Area in almost a decade. It’s located at 2169 University Ave., on the bottom floor of the university’s Helen Diller Anchor House, in a roomy space designed by local Lundberg Design architects.
Sightglass started in 2009 inside a World War I-era warehouse in San Francisco’s SoMa district. It now runs several shops in the Bay Area and one in West Hollywood. The company’s name comes from the “viewing window on our vintage PROBAT coffee roaster that exposes the complex and delicate process of roasting coffee,” its website explains.
Sightglass Coffee opened a new cafe in May 2026 in downtown Berkeley. (Photo courtesy of Sightglass Coffee)
“Coffee is a seasonal fruit and we source it directly from origin in freshly harvested lots,” the website continues. “We practice small production methods that allow us to scrutinize and perfect our processes. Attaining a perfect roast is an intuition, a smell, a sound, a slight change in color — it’s about careful attention to detail that comes through in every cup.”
Coffee ranges from $4.75 for a Quick Cup — add two bucks to get it from a Hario V60 pour-over apparatus — to $8.25 for an Iced Brown Butter Miso Caramel Latte With Cold Foam. In between, there’s a mocha made with Dandelion Chocolate, flat whites, organic teas, espresso tonics and a Vanilla Paste Latte (one of the auspicious times it’s good to eat paste). There are also flavored cold coffees on tap and a rotating seasonal beverage, which, as of press time, was a Cookie Butter Latte.
The food menu has salads and breakfast sandwiches, paninis and burritos ($11-$15), as well as a lone cold turkey club. Pastries come from Oakland’s Sunday Bakeshop, specializing in Asian-fusion treats, and doughnuts and certain hot foods are from George’s Donuts & Merriment in San Francisco.
For its inaugural brew, the cafe will be pouring a regenerative organic coffee called Grizzly Peak Blend, with some of the proceeds going to Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard Project.
Details: Open 6:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays at 2169 University Ave., Berkeley; sightglasscoffee.com