A great joy for us here at Sprudge is the pleasure of watching coffee brands grow and change over time. We’ve been going to Demitasse—a coffee bar and roaster based in the LA area—since shortly after they launched in 2011. Now here in 2026, the brand is enjoying an extensively rebuilt and remodeled cafe experience at its coffee bar in Santa Monica. Let’s take a closer look.
The 2026 Build-outs of Coffee is presented by DONA, Pacific Barista Series, and La Marzocco.
As told to Sprudge by Bobak Roshan.
For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?
Demitasse started in LA in 2011. We’re a specialty coffee roaster/retailer. (We grew to three cafes, then COVID took two of them.) Our lone survivor is a cafe in Santa Monica. We roast our own coffee, we’re zero-waste where it counts, and we make creative drinks, increasingly from botanicals we grow ourselves out front and inside the cafe.
Can you tell us a bit about the new space?
We knocked down our old bar and rebuilt the whole thing. The centerpiece is the bar: the whole front face is a mosaic of broken glass and ceramic in the shape of a vine of leaves—made from cups, plates, and gear we’ve shattered and saved over the years. The redesign was about removing the barrier between our baristas and the people they’re making coffee for—no wall, just the bar and the person behind it. To that end, we got a pair of Modbars and rearranged our barflow so customers could really connect with the team. Out front and inside the cafe, we now grow all sorts of things—fig and makrut lime trees, plus a handful of herbs—that go straight into the menu.
What’s your approach to coffee?
We roast our own, meticulously, from responsibly sourced producers we’ve worked with for years. The cafe is a lab—we like building drinks you can’t get anywhere else, and we rejigged how we make drinks to increasingly use things we grow. (Pineapple sage, mojito mint and shiso we grow are all on the menu today.) Seasonal, a little weird on purpose, but always built on solid coffee.
Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?
The big move was switching from a KB to Modbars. We really wanted to open up the space and get rid of any barriers between the customer and the barista. We have all our herbs in a garnish station of sorts out for folks to see. We really want this place to feel like an indoor garden.
How is your project considering sustainability?
Zero-waste isn’t a slogan for us—it’s the operation. We’re a Certified Green Business. We print our own biodegradable coffee bags in-house (no plastic degassing valve, no tin tie, no stick-on label). We brew paper-filter-free, run a KDS instead of paper tickets, donate what we can’t sell, and deliver our LA wholesale peeps in returnable totes. The bar itself was built from cups, plates, and gear we’d shattered and saved over the years rather than thrown out—a decade of accidents, glued into something. The botanicals now going into our drinks come from plants growing in our own front lot and inside the cafe—the tightest possible supply chain.
What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?
We’re open now!
Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?
The vine-and-leaf mosaic was designed by our friend and interior designer Lisa Delena. The build itself—gluing hundreds of pieces of broken glass and ceramic—was done by me and the whole staff over several days. Special mentions: Ilya for the long hours behind the glue, Montse for the textured white paint that pulled the whole thing together, and Meghan, one of our favorite regulars, who got on the floor with us for the finishing touches. A customer who happened to walk in during the build also ended up gluing pieces alongside us. It became a community project. Nothing more Demitasse than that.
Thank you!
Thanks for the chance to share this. The bar was a dream I’d been holding onto for years—telling anyone who’d listen. Getting to actually build it, and to have staff, regulars, and even a walk-in customer glue it together with me, was better than any version I’d imagined.
The 2026 Build-outs of Coffee is presented by DONA, Pacific Barista Series, and La Marzocco.
