Dark Horse Coffee Roasters Heads East

This morning, Dark Horse Coffee Roasters opens its fourth cafe in San Diego, bringing craft coffee to the East County community. The local roaster has set up shop in the ground floor of a La Mesa residential building, in a 500-square-foot space that features a generously-sized patio.

Having developed a substantial following at its existing locations in North Park, Normal Heights, and Golden Hill, Dark Horse’s Bryan Charlson says the Eastern migration was a logical next step, since many of their peers and customers in metro San Diego have recently resettled in neighborhoods like La Mesa.

Open Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., the cafe will serve a menu that includes single-origin pour overs, cold brew on nitro and specialty drinks ranging from a Salted Maple Latte to The Champ with espresso, steamed milk, honey, and cinnamon. New for La Mesa are Liege-style waffles, available in both sweet and savory options, which will be offered along with Dark Horse’s vegan doughnut line from Skinny Donuts.

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Last year, the Dark Horse upgraded to a 35 kilo Loring roaster in anticipation for continued expansion, which includes new cafes and a growing wholesale program, and has partnered with Joyride Coffee Distributors to circulate its cold brew kegs and whole bean coffee throughout San Diego as well as Los Angeles and Orange County.

The company is also venturing outside of San Diego, with an outpost scheduled to open this November in Koloa, Hawaii, the hometown of owners/brothers Daniel, Bryan, and Randy Charlson. And Dark Horse will be one of the tenants of the new SteelCraft shipping container food hall in the works for Garden Grove, CA, which is slated for a January 2019 launch.

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