By KEITH ANTIGIOVANNI
Two more coffee shops have opened in Pacific Beach in close proximity to one another: What’s In Your Cup?, and Goddess Coffee.
What’s In Your Cup? is located at 955 Grand Ave. on the first floor of Oakmont Pacific Beach, the senior living center on the corner of Grand and Cass. Co-owners Heather Magana and Susie Montero opened on July 5 after six months of preparation that included a build-out, design, acquiring products, and learning how to make the drinks.
Magana, who relocated from Torrance, has a background in the coffee industry and a Guatemalan background. “After the previous leaseholders’ contract expired, I contacted Oakmont to try to get a new lease on the location,” Magana said.
The current location had been vacant for six years since the Purple Coffee Shop closed in 2017. Prior to that, it was known as the Javanican cafe that stretched back to the 1970s. From the time it closed until 2017, there were a series of leaseholders that tried to open up as a coffee business but for a variety of reasons including construction, covid, and other delays, it remained vacant until Magana and Montero opened it.
Montero, a native of Cuba, joined forces with Magana in January as they worked together to launch the business, “My fiance and I were trying to come up with ideas for a business, and we decided on coffee.”
What’s In Your Cup? is open from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 8 a.m.-2 p.m. on the weekends and features coffee, bagels, pastries, and a power drink that boosts energy from an all-natural plant-based boost from coffee beans. The website is whatsinyourcupsd.com.
About a month before What’s In Your Cup? opened, another coffee business opened at 910 Grand Ave., Goddess Coffee, the city’s first known cafe to feature baristas in bikinis, opened just before Memorial Day. The shop serves a variety of coffee, espresso drinks, nitro cold brew, tea protein ice-blended espresso drinks, plant-based energy drink fusions, and the popular Chagaccino mushroom coffee, freshly baked donuts, and pastries from women-owned local bakeries.
According to its website (goddesscoffeesd.com), “Our mission is to inspire women everywhere to free their inner Goddess, to love their bodies, embrace their sensuality, their natural beauty, and their divine feminine power within.” Goddess Coffee concept is a collaboration between husband and wife but is primarily San Diego-native, woman-owned, and operated by MaLinda Bloch.
Their website states why their baristas wear bikinis: “Our mission is to inspire women of all shapes, sizes, and colors to embrace their bodies.”
