It’s not easy to share space. Everyone in San Francisco has a story about a nightmare roommate. But when two regulars at High Treason, a wine bar and bottle shop at Clement Street and Sixth Avenue, floated the idea of opening their own coffee shop inside the bar, High Treason’s co-owner, Michael Ireland, was intrigued.
The regulars, Nathan Kruse and Luis Gonzalez, were both baristas at The Coffee Movement on Balboa Street, a famously nerdy coffee shop when it came to beans and technique. Ireland, who felt the same way about wine, respected that obsessiveness. He’d been thinking of opening a coffee shop in his bar, but this could be even better.
“I sat down with them. I tasted the coffee. And, you know, this is perfect,” Ireland said. “They are coffee geeks. We are wine geeks. We mesh pretty well.” And thus, in June of 2024, the HI NRG coffee collaboration was born.
As long as commercial rent continues to be stratospheric in San Francisco, businesses will do double-duty. The Laundromat in the Outer Richmond serves bagels in the morning and pizzas and smash burgers at night. Breck’s on Clement Street does double duty as a cafe and wine bar.
But wine and coffee are particularly frequent roommates.
“It’s a way to maximize the space. Especially in San Francisco, rent is such a huge gatekeeper for a lot of up-and-coming business owners,” said Kruse. “It’s kind of a no-brainer.”
Joshua Kaplowitz, who ran his pop-up Better Half Coffee at Habibi Bar on Hyde Street for more than two years, agrees. “You have this beautiful space that’s very communal,” said Kaplowitz. “But then you have an entire segment of the day that isn’t available to that same community. And in San Francisco, you pay rent 24/7, right?”
To use the space at High Treason bar, HI NRG pays a 10 percent commission to the owners. Similarly, Better Half Coffee paid a “menial cost” to the owner of Habibi Bar. In return, the wine bar gains foot traffic. “People come in for their coffee, and they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know this wine bar was here,’” said Ireland. “Then they come back to enjoy a glass of wine.”
The coffee-wine collab is not without drama
But pop-up founders and business owners also say it’s a huge commitment that requires a lot of trust.
“It can get a little dicey,” said Ireland. “People are sometimes nervous about relinquishing some control, giving their space to folks.” He was one of those people. He took a risk, seeing how passionate Kruse and Gonzalez are about coffee, but stopped by the shop often in the early days, just to keep an eye on things.
The collaboration was also not without the typical San Francisco neighborhood drama. Originally, the baristas at HI NRG sold coffee out of the big accordion window looking out to Clement Street. But a coffee shop owner down the street, unhappy about the competition, complained to the Department of Public Health.
“It was such a rough day, man,” Ireland recalled. “Luis was crying. He thought they were gonna have to close.”
The issue was simple: There was no sink at the window where coffee was made. Ireland’s solution was also simple. “You guys can make coffee at the bar, and there’s a sink right there,” he told the baristas.
As with other roommate situations, it helps that a coffee pop-up doesn’t need much space. “If you have water and power, you can make good coffee,” Kruse said.
On a recent Thursday, as it rained on and off in the Richmond District, sunlight poured through the skylight into the open, airy space at High Treason. Kruse swiftly made cup after cup of cappuccino and cortado behind the bar as customers, most of whom he greeted by name, talked about a recent wedding, a letter they wrote to a friend or summer parties they were planning.
“This is a dream space for us,” Kruse said. Clement Street is a food-oriented street, but doesn’t have many good specialty coffee spots, he added. The weekly Sunday farmers market also brings in a lot of foot traffic.
LA, New York, CDMX, now San Francisco
The model — a collaboration between wine bars and specialty coffee pop-ups— has been popular in other big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City, Kruse said.
But that trend hasn’t yet made much of a dent in San Francisco. For the existing business, bringing another business under its roof is a commitment. “You’re inviting this whole other image into your space,” Kruse said. It’s a move that could dilute the existing brand.
Fortunately, wine bars and specialty coffee shops share a similar base of customers, said Kaplowitz of Better Half Coffee.
“It’s a great strategy for both businesses: The one popping up, and the business being popped into,” added Michelle Reynolds, communications manager at San Francisco’s Office of Small Business. “They get to piggyback off of each other and bring this liveliness into the neighborhood.”
Better Half Coffee, for example, began as a part of a Russian-doll-like set of pop-ups: It is a pop-up within Habibi Bar, and Habibi Bar itself started as a pop-up at Bacchus Wine Bar during the pandemic.
Kaplowitz took pride in becoming a good steward of the shared space. After two years of setting up shop at Habibi Bar on Hyde Street, he has become familiar with different wines and sold bottles for people who came in, looking for a bottle to bring to brunch before the bar opens.
Sharing space, sharing fare
Those who benefitted from the generosity of being allowed to set up shop within an existing business, often pay it forward to other budding businesses. HI NRG sells pastries from another pop-up called Vinegary Personality, and Better Half Coffee serves desserts from Bellaria Dessert Studio, which also started as a pop-up.
In March, the collaboration between Habibi Bar and Better Half Coffee came to an end after two and a half years, but it was good news. Habibi Bar is moving on to take over Ristorante Milano, a nearby Italian restaurant; the owner is retiring. And Better Half Coffee will follow, creating a coffee bar that lives permanently in that new space.
Like so, owners of brick-and-mortar businesses and founders of pop-ups share space and time, and cheer each other on down the road.
“I’m so excited at some point they’re gonna leave and they’re gonna open their own place,” Ireland said of the baristas at HI NRG. “They’ve got it. It’s easy to root for them.”
I’m surprised nobody just opens an all-day wine and coffee bar. Places like this exist all over Europe.
Love hi nrg but I don’t browse mission local to read about nyc, cdmx, abcd, or Timbuktu. Every word about those places is a word that could have been about San Francisco. Love Mission Local and I encourage you to keep it local.
This is an article about multiple local San Francisco businesses what the heck are you talking about? The only mention of other cities is in literally one sentence of the article where the author is referencing something Kruse (a San Franciscan and co-founder of HI NRG) says. Bizarre reaction on your part.