Reference · Timeline

Downtown LA coffee: a timeline

A compact, sourced chronology of the places and events that shaped specialty coffee in downtown Los Angeles, with the emphasis on the 2011–2015 boom. Dates are as given in the sources; “reported” means the date of the article, not necessarily the opening.

1. 1917
   Grand Central Market opens (October) on the ground floor of the Homer Laughlin Building. Early on it mainly served wealthier patrons who used the Angels Flight railway from Bunker Hill. Wikipedia
2. 1979
   Spring Street Financial District listed on the National Register of Historic Places (August 10). Wikipedia
3. 1999
   Adaptive reuse ordinance encourages converting old office buildings to housing; Tom Gilmore’s Old Bank District opens its first building in fall 2000. Wikipedia
4. 2003
   Trish Rothgeb is generally credited with coining “third wave” coffee in an article this year. Wikipedia
5. Feb 2011
   CoffeeBar reported as newly opened on Spring Street by Michael Leko and Will Shamlian. LAist · café file
6. Mar 2011
   LA Weekly’s top-10 list includes both Spring for Coffee (548 S. Spring) and CoffeeBar (600 S. Spring). LA Weekly
7. c. 2011
   Handsome Coffee Roasters founded by Intelligentsia alumni Michael Phillips, Chris Owens and Tyler Wells, with a roastery and café in the downtown Arts District (“about three years” before April 2014). Daily Coffee News
8. c. 2012
   Grand Central Market begins its revival under Adele Yellin, mixing legacy stalls with new food vendors. Wikipedia
9. Sep 2012
   Food Republic profiles nine LA multi-roaster coffeehouses, including CoffeeBar, Spring for Coffee, Demitasse and Café Dulce. Food Republic · explainer
10. May 31, 2013
    G&B Coffee (Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski) starts serving at Grand Central Market, on the Hill Street side facing Angels Flight, after a six-month residency at Sqirl. Sprudge
11. Apr 7, 2014
    Eater LA reports Blue Bottle Coffee is buying Handsome’s flagship roastery and bar plus the subscription service Tonx. Daily Coffee News
12. Jul 2014
    Handsome’s Arts District café is fully converted to Blue Bottle; the new sign goes up on Mateo Street. Los Angeles Magazine
13. Jan 30, 2015
    Santa Cruz roaster Verve opens its first LA coffee shop and roastery on Spring Street in the Fashion District: 1,600 sq ft, a custom Kees van der Westen machine, shared with Juice Served Here. LAist
14. 2017
    Nestlé acquires a majority stake (68%) in Blue Bottle, the company that bought Handsome. Wikipedia (Blue Bottle Coffee)

Reading the timeline

Three threads run through it. First, housing came before coffee: the 1999 adaptive reuse ordinance and the Old Bank District lofts brought residents back to the Historic Core a decade before CoffeeBar and Spring for Coffee opened on the same block. Second, multi-roaster cafés introduced downtown to roasters from San Francisco, Portland and Santa Cruz around 2011–2012, while a local roaster, Handsome, supplied many of them. Third, consolidation followed: by 2014–2015 national specialty brands were buying local roasters or opening their own downtown roasteries.

Gaps

This timeline lists only what could be confirmed in the linked sources. It deliberately leaves out openings and closings that could not be verified — including any closing date for CoffeeBar.