Inside the new 11th Hour Coffee cafe in downtown Santa Cruz. All images courtesy of 11th Hour.
Following an extensive three-month remodel, 11th Hour Coffee‘s flagship cafe in downtown Santa Cruz is now open with extended hours and more space.
With a wall removed, the brighter and airier coffee bar, cocktail bar eatery and plant shop is now better integrated into a spacious whole. It also has new floors, a larger dining room and a fresh menu from its remodeled kitchen.
“I’ve always felt like our shop and a coffee shop in general is supposed to be a hub for the community to convene,” Brayden Estby, who co-founded 11th Hour with his brother Joel Estby, told DCN. “And since we have such a big space, we’re really just trying to capitalize on that and bring the local community together.”
The revamped food menu features a variety of egg dishes, sandwiches and stews, including a shakshuka, a croque madame, a grilled cheese with bechamel. Focaccia, pastries, cheesecake and other items are crafted in-house under the direction of head baker Talia Damon, whose team is working on adding more vegan items and other options based on customer feedback. A brunch program is coming soon.
After 5 p.m., the 11th Hour space transforms into sibling brand After Hours, a cocktail lounge now under the direction of Allen Bjur. Food in the evening comes from Chubbs Chicken Sandwiches and Full Steam Dumpling, separately owned companies that operate from a 2,000-square-foot shared kitchen at the back of the 7,000-square-foot complex.
The cafe space occupies a whopping 4,800 square feet. To accommodate the predicted higher volume of service, 11th Hour has replaced its vintage Bezzera 3-group manual lever espresso machine with a pair of SanRemo Cafe Racer machines with five combined groups.
“It was an efficiency thing and a staff training thing. We just had to upgrade for how busy we were,” Brayden Estby said. “But it does really bum me out. I miss the lever.”
Reinforcing the cafe’s dedication to coffee craft is a new wooden coffee bar, cabinetry and other original woodwork details designed primarily by Joel Estby and completed by the brothers.
“Our intention with 11th hour since the beginning has always been to be an ode to manual and to raw material, and to not go the more synthetic aesthetic,” Brayden Estby said. “We have stayed true to using lots of plants, metal, rock work, woodwork. All the tables are redwood. All of that is really our brand. We got successful, I think, from being a place that felt so handmade, personal and custom.”
The Estbys opened 11th Hour’s original downtown location in 2018 as part of a shared “food lounge” multi-business hub. They opened a second location in the Westside neighborhood in 2021, then took ownership of the whole downtown building in 2022.
In the meantime, the company has upgraded to a Diedrich IR-12 roaster, which last year was relocated from the Westside shop to a dedicated production warehouse about a block away.
11th Hour Coffee is located at 1001 Center St #1 in Santa Cruz. Tell DCN’s editors about your new coffee shop or roastery here.
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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.
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