Inside the new Hedge Coffee cafe, roastery and Sovda showroom in San Francisco’s Mission District. Photo by Lindsey Shea, courtesy of Hedge Coffee.
An expertly manicured garden of coffee roasts and brews awaits customers in San Francisco’s Mission District, where pop-up and event-focused Hedge Coffee this month put down roots with an ambitious 4,000-square-foot location.
Guests pass under the shade of a 15-foot redwood tree in the courtyard before entering the long industrial space with lofty ceilings. A redwood bench runs along one side, and other natural woods form a tall shelving unit that divides the cafe from a multipurpose cupping-and-events area.
Photo by Lindsey Shea, courtesy of Hedge Coffee.
“Our space is a combination of our passion for natural materials and industrial design,” Olga Sobal told Daily Coffee News. “We wanted to create a space that feels modern but projects warmth at the same time, hence a lot of redwood interwoven into all aspects of the room.”
Beyond the cafe, yet still visible from the front-of-house, is the new Hedge roastery, which doubles as a showroom for coffee equipment company Sovda. Coffees work their way through a Sovda Pearl Mini Sorter and into a Loring S35 Kestrel machine through a Sovda Lift. Blends are combined in a Sovda Blend and retail bags are filled through a Sovda Precision Fill.
Photo by Lindsey Shea, courtesy of Hedge Coffee.
The coffee bar, meanwhile, was built by Capsule MFG, which also made the fleet of bars that Hedge used throughout the city for the past decade through popups and other occasions.
“The bar is permanent, but the design has similarities to how set up for mobile events,” Sobal said.
The low-profile stations are equipped with Modbar groupheads and steam wands, four Mazzer Kony and two Weber Workshops EG-1 grinders. Manual brews come through Hario Switch brewers, and counter-height wood pillars flank the bar for pedestal-like drink delivery.
Photo by Lindsey Shea, courtesy of Hedge Coffee.
The menu also includes teas from Roots & Craft and pastries from local bakeries. Audio engineers Chris Latina and Jonathan Carr designed the acoustics and sound system, with guest DJs spinning vinyl throughout the day.
Married business partners Olga and Alex Sobal founded Hedge Coffee in 2015 as a mobile operation, serving coffees roasted by San Francisco’s Linea Caffe. When events halted during the pandemic in 2020, the company brought roasting in-house, with Alex taking the lead as head roaster.
Photo by Lindsey Shea, courtesy of Hedge Coffee.
Today, Hedge buys green coffees through importers such as Royal Coffee, InterAmerican, Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF) and Bonaventure Coffee Project, always with an eye towards transparency and responsible environmental stewardship. Hedge also sources coffees directly from producers when possible.
“The cafe and roastery are to enable Hedge to both provide a space for our community to gather, while increasing our wholesale footprint with the expanded roasting capacity,” said Sobal. “It’s our busiest event season in tandem with opening our first location so we’re focused on this moment first before we begin to dream up the next iteration of Hedge.”
Photo by Lindsey Shea, courtesy of Hedge Coffee.
Hedge Coffee is located at 434 Shotwell Street.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
