Inside the new Torque Coffee bar in San Diego. All images courtesy of Torque Coffee.
Progressive coffee roasting company Torque Coffee is proving to be a force to be reckoned with in San Diego.
After launching with an unprecedented “proportional pricing” model in 2022, the company recently opened its first cafe. A grand opening celebration is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 20.
Including Torque’s new roastery, the new coffee shop joins a handful of other businesses inside the historic Rock Palace building on a largely underserved stretch of El Cajon Boulevard straddling the City Heights and Normal Heights neighborhoods.
The 1930s Art Deco-style building, known for its history as a live music venue, sat vacant for more than two decades before the recent renovation.
Inside, Torque occupies an elongated space with 15-foot ceilings and north-facing front windows, with plenty of inside seating.
The shop expands upon the deep and multifaceted coffee experience of Torque’s founders, Andy and Nanelle Newbom, who originally started roasting under the Torque name at the California Coffee Collective in nearby San Marcos.
Nanelle Newbom now oversees the production team on El Cajon Boulevard, where a 6-kilogram-capacity Primo machine sits at the back of the shop.
Fresh coffees make their way a short distance to one of two coffee bars, a hot espresso bar with a Synesso Hydra 3 machine and multiple Compak E8 grinders or a “zero proof” cold bar, featuring flavorful, health-centered alcohol-free libations. The bars are additionally supported by a Ground Control Cyclops batch brewer and a Nimbus reverse-osmosis water system.
Said Andy Newbom, “Our coffee bar is very different in concept even though it feels familiar.”
Newbom said the bar allows the Torque crew to get real-time continuous feedback on the coffees in various formats and preparations, while also giving more credence to the “proportional pricing model.”
The model is designed to pay producers 20% of the retail value of the roasted, bagged coffee upfront, rather than basing the price on actual green coffee market costs, which might typically result in exponentially lower prices to farmers or producers.
In addition to featuring Torque coffees, the new shop also includes a kitchen for scratch-made pastries and other foods.
“Our menu is a progressive, plant-forward, meat free menu,” Andy Newbom said, adding that the majority of the menu is vegan.
Outside the cafe, sales of Torque coffees are also revving up, with new deals with multiroaster sellers such as Spinn, Crema and GoCoffeeGo, plus additional wholesale accounts.
Said Andy Newbom, “We plan to open two more retail locations, without roasting onsite, and eventually open a bigger roastery as we grow.”
Torque Coffee is located at 3459 El Cajon Blvd in San Diego. Tell DCN’s editors about your new coffee shop or roastery here.
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Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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