The campus coffee shop has a long proud history all over the world, as nexus hubs of caffeination, education, and the wider dissemination of coffee culture writ large. A new entry to this storied ledger comes to us today from UC Berkeley, where Sightglass Coffee recently opened a coffee bar on campus. Go Golden Bears!
The 2026 Build-outs of Coffee is presented by DONA, Pacific Barista Series, and La Marzocco.
As told to Sprudge by Florent Cantat.
For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?
Sightglass was born in San Francisco in 2009 and is proudly women-owned and -led today. Our name comes from the small window on our roasters that lets us observe each batch as it develops. Attention to detail is what makes coffee remarkable, and it’s what shapes the lasting relationships we build with producers and the care we take to reveal the character of their coffees. In practice that means small-batch roasting in San Francisco, buying through direct relationships and rooms designed to put the work in view rather than behind a wall. Berkeley is our fifth cafe, three in San Francisco, one in Los Angeles, and now the East Bay.
Can you tell us a bit about the new space?
Our new cafe is on the ground floor of UC Berkeley’s Helen Diller Anchor House, at University and Oxford, where downtown Berkeley meets campus. Lundberg Design took two starting points: the process of filtration and percolation, and the form of our large vintage Probat.
Concentric circles drawn from our logo organize the plan and define a long curved bar that puts the baristas, and the work of making coffee, at the center of the room. Overhead, a mechanical soffit borrows the conical shape of a bean hopper, and a drum of steel and stainless mesh, fabricated in Lundberg’s shop, filters the daylight coming through the full-height windows. Fluted tile echoes the folds of a paper filter. Hand-raked plaster is the color of a milky latte. None of it announces itself, and all of it holds up to the pace the bar actually runs at.
What we were really building was a palette. Every surface was specified to wear into a patina rather than resist one, and to be sourced without long lead times. It’s a kit of parts rather than a template, meant to recombine site by site. Berkeley is the first Sightglass built this way, and the blueprint for the ones that follow.
What’s your approach to coffee?
We buy through direct relationships and, increasingly, contract harvests which puts us in the selection much earlier than a buyer working from finished lots. We roast in small batches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, rotating blends alongside single origins, and we’d rather a coffee be recognizably itself than sanded down to fit a house profile.
For the launch of the cafe we created Grizzly Peak, named for the ridge that rises just above Berkeley and our first Regenerative Organic Certified coffee.
Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?
Everything sits on the curved bar in full view. There’s no back bar to hide a machine behind, so the equipment (La Marzocco) had to look as good from the customer side as it works from ours. In the cup: Grizzly Peak Blend alongside rotating single origins, roasted in San Francisco.
How is your project considering sustainability?
Three ways:
Sourcing first: Grizzly Peak is Regenerative Organic Certified, and the contract harvest work is meant to make farming decisions viable years out rather than season to season.
The build: specifying every surface to develop a patina instead of showing wear is a durability strategy, since the greenest cafe interior is the one nobody rips out in five years, and short-lead-time materials cut freight and expediting.
The building: Anchor House is LEED Gold with rooftop solar covering roughly a third of its cooling load. That isn’t our achievement, but it’s the reason this café’s operating footprint is lower than it would be on another corner.
What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?
Opened on May 8th, 2026
Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?
Thank you!
Thank YOU Sprudge!
box]Sightglass Coffee Roasters is located at 2169 University Ave, Berkeley. Visit their official website and follow them on Instagram.[/box]
The 2026 Build-outs of Coffee is presented by DONA, Pacific Barista Series, and La Marzocco.
