Oceanside’s coffee revolution

This retail coffee shop representing the Leucadia roaster pairs vintage objects and beach community vibe with fresh roasted coffee, cold brew and coffee based drinks, plus a small menu of baked goods and sundry food items." Revolution Roasters opened its first retail shop in mid-September on the Coast Highway in Oceanside. The roaster continues to cook beans where it started as a wholesaler four years ago — in the back of Leucadia’s Coffee Coffee restaurant and café. However, by staking out a space eight miles north, owners Dan and Miriah Scheibe hope to bring their brand of specialty coffee to a wider market.

“We really saw a huge opportunity in this area — it’s really blossoming,” says Miriah, referring to a stretch at the south end of Oceanside around Vista Way. “The beer scene is happening, the cocktails are happening, the food’s happening — and there was just really no coffee yet.”

Miriah quit her job in biotech last year to focus on growing the coffee business but says she didn’t do so expecting to open a café. “It was never the plan to open our own space,” she explains, “We had initially started as a wholesale roasting company — that was our goal and dream.”

But seven or eight months ago, she got to thinking that opening a retail space was the best way to market their coffee. “We just realized it was a little bit hard for us to grow our brand without our own café presence.”

Dan Scheibe still works in biotech full-time, roasting on weekends. Assistant roaster Kasey May says the smell of coffee roasting in Coffee Coffee has become a cherished ritual for its Leucadia customers and the roasters alike. However, he adds that he welcomes the opportunity to control their coffee’s preparation in his role as manager of the new shop. He and the staff enjoy experimenting with different extraction theories after-hours to fine tune their product for quality and consistency.

He says they also value having direct feedback from their customers, using it to refine their roasting practice. “We have already made a few small tweaks and adjustments to some of our roasting profiles,” he says, “which is exactly what we were hoping for out of this place.”

Revolution offers light, medium, and dark roasts, depending on a bean’s origin, but skews a little darker than some of its Roast Highway neighbors. This seems to be in keeping with many of their customers’ tastes, and several loyal North County customers have already sought out Revolution’s beans in Oceanside. “We have a lot of those traditional flavors that a lot of people associate with coffee,” May explains. “Deep chocolate notes, caramels, and a bitter roastiness, a woodiness.”

Decorated by an eclectic assortment of antiques and vintage curiosities — including a wild boar’s head — the airy shop offers drip, single-origin pour-over, and espresso drinks, plus a chocolaty cold-brew blend of Honduran and Ethiopian beans, available on nitro. A full kitchen will eventually serve baked goods plus breakfast and lunch dishes, but in the meantime the menu focuses on third-party pastries, coffee and ice cream affogatos, and rotating seasonal concoctions involving simple syrups and fresh local ingredients.