1 Oz Coffee, an independently-owned cafe with locations in Mountain View and Santa Clara, is gearing up to make its Southern California debut in late summer or early fall, with a Huntington Beach outpost located at 155 5th St, according to owner Yulia Kolchanova.
“We’re really excited,” Kolchanova tells What Now Orange County. “It’s definitely going to be a slightly different clientele…I think in Huntington Beach we’ll expect to see more tourists, but we still see a lot of surfers in the area and these guys also love good coffee.”
In an effort to meet the unique needs of the Southern California market, Kolchanova says that they’ll be localizing the menu just a bit, with an expanded range of cold brew and iced coffee options, and bean mixtures that complement the warmer climate.
“We provide various coffees from different farms, different roasters, we experiment with the bean themselves a lot. Here, I think we’ll play a little more with the recipes, just because it’s a hot, warmer city, we will probably have a little more focus on coffee cocktails – we’ll call it this way,” says Kolchanova.
For reference, 1 Oz’s Bay Area menu is a mixture of both traditional and innovative coffee concoctions, ranging from an Americano, Machiatto, and Espresso Tonic prepared with iced tonic water, to a Gibraltar, or double shot of espresso with milk steamed at a lower temperature, a Cinnamon Honey Latte, and seasonal summer treats like the Coconut Dreamsicle Latte and Iced Mango Matcha Latte.
Meanwhile, while its northern counterparts offer light fare such as seasonal danishes and muffins, chia seed pudding, and a variety of croissants including a vegan option baked in-house, Kolchanova says 1 Oz Huntington Beach will also include breakfast and brunch items, with an emphasis on healthy, fresh food.
“It’s going to be a new, exciting part of the menu that we’ll be working on,” says Kolchanova.
Aside from its existing locations in Silicon Valley, 1 Oz Coffee also offers a specialty coffee catering service, which they similarly hope to expand throughout the Orange County and Los Angeles regions, capitalizing on the city’s entertainment and business hubs.
Perhaps most intriguing of all, however, is 1 Oz’s coffee classes, in which folks can spend an hour or two learning about the nuance and intricacies of espresso, latte art, and pour-overs.
“Our focus is definitely on the educational part,” says Kolchanova. “Our baristas are very well trained. They usually spend months before they begin pulling shots and doing their latte art. So we definitely want to provide the latte art trainings and classes here as well.”
Kolchanova founded 1 Oz. Coffee in 2012, just four years after she and her husband immigrated from their native Siberia. The idea, which Kolchanova began formulating while studying English, was to create a “coffee boutique that would carry various beans from different roasters and also would have high-quality espresso drinks crafted by professional and passionate coffee scientists,” the small business owner’s endearing term for baristas.
What’s more, the name 1 Oz is a distillation of most coffee drinks’ very essence, a traditional espresso shot. As such, the company prides itself on eschewing artificial syrups and sweetness, instead relying solely on the “pure beauty of what nature put into the coffee beans of different origins and the natural sweetness of the milk.”
