“It feels like I had a new baby,” said Jeff Clinard, founder and co-owner of Bear Coast Coffee. In eight years, his budding coffeehouse brand, which started in San Clemente in 2015 and has since grown to two additional locations in Dana Point, has helped bring small-batch coffee drinks and well-made fare (think avocado toast — and beyond) to South County’s coastal enclaves.
On Saturday, Jan. 6, he will officially welcome his newest offspring, located on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach inside a former liquor store across the street from the shuttered Boom Boom Room nightclub.
While the latest Bear Coast Coffee has been serving people since December, when it softly opened to get its sea legs, the official opening makes Clinard’s fourth location. Best of all, it’s in an area of the tourist-heavy town that is closer to denizens’ homes rather than an out-of-towner hotspot.
“I chose an area of Laguna closer to where people live,” he said, noting that Laguna Beach was always in the back of his mind while building his company. “I grew up in Irvine but spent every summer in Laguna Beach, coming to 10th Street and Aliso Beach. And it’s in the name ‘Bear Coast,’ so we wanted to stay close to the ocean cities in South County.”
In addition to the Laguna space being its biggest cafe thus far, it will also come with an expanded menu with new options care of a bigger kitchen with more room for experimentation. “Now that we have a grease trap, we can make bacon!” he exclaims.
While the Laguna Beach spot will feature Bear Coast Coffee’s staple espresso drinks and batch-brewed coffees (the cold brew is a personal favorite), Masha Manko, Bear Coast Coffee’s kitchen manager, has created new dishes like a breakfast bowl with potatoes and Greek yogurt sauce, house-made buttermilk biscuits with homemade jam and honey butter, a caprese sandwich and a turkey club replete with crispy bacon. The new coffeehouse will also have grab-and-go items, like a new beet salad. “The goal with this new space is to experiment with food in the afternoon and maybe even into the evenings depending upon demand, but maybe even dishes we can start propagating to our other cafes,” he explains.
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Design aficionados, in between sips of espresso, can marvel at the midcentury-modern space where Bear Coast Coffee now calls home. A crimson exterior provides contrast to the white interior space with wood-slat ceilings and exposed beams; a look you won’t find at any Seattle-based multinational chain who shall remain nameless.
When asked if Bear Coast Coffee plans on further expansion in 2024, Clinard says, “The biggest focus I have, along with my co-owner, Josh Burns, is to focus on the communities we’ve already established — more events, more wholesale and doubling down on the groups of people we’ve fallen in love with at our cafes.”
Hours are 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.
Find it: 1391 S. Coast Highway, unit A, Laguna Beach
