Couple buys Bank of America building
Cal Poly location to open
-August 12,2021-
Jon & Sara Peterson, owners of Scout Coffee, have purchased the shuttered Bank of America building in the heart of Morro Bay at 390 Morro Bay Blvd. The bank closed this branch in February 2018 and put the property up for sale early this year. If there are fewer customers using brick and mortar bank branches these days – there seems to be more of us drinking coffee.
The British Coffee Assn says coffee is the most popular drink worldwide with around two billion cups consumed every day.
Sara says she “loved the idea of owning a coffee shop when I was in high school, before it became part of daily life for most people.” She worked at coffee shops and in hospitality most of her adult life along with Jon. The couple met in 1999 when they were 18 and got married in 2005.
After a couple years at Starbucks, Sara says she worked for a Mom and Pop coffee place back east where she gained experience in many different facets of the business. In Santa Cruz, the couple worked together in the early days at Verve Coffee Roasters, where Sara became the Retail Operations Director and Jon the Marketing Director. They furthered their experience by helping open 2 new locations there in Santa Cruz over 5 years.
Learning many aspects of the business, the couple came visiting in San Luis Obispo, looking for a spot where they could start their own place. ”We happened to park right in front of a 1400sf building on Garden St that had a for lease sign in the window” says Sara. The cozy store opened in January of 2014. They opened their coffee roasting company, HoneyCo Coffee, in January of 2015.
With lines out the door at the Garden St shop, the couple decided to open a second location off Foothill in 2016 after some encouragement from the landlord there. As of now, the company has two locations in San Luis Obispo at 1130 Garden Street and at 880 Foothill Blvd.
In the early days, Jon sourced, roasted and bagged all the coffee, in addition to managing their online coffee business and the back-end needs like accounting, while Sara ran the cafes, bakery, buying and merchandising, and all things relating to the customer experience.
Fast forward to 2021 and the couple – now with decades of experience and business still booming – signed a deal with Cal Poly to open a third location near the dorms, a 2500sf store next to the Welcome Center that is slated to open this Fall.
Still, Jon knew he needed to find a bigger building to house the roasting business and have room for a full-size commercial kitchen, with the additional demand between Cal Poly and the online business. “That kind of space is hard to find in SLO” says Jon.
Coffee weather
As he started to monitor potential spaces outside of San Luis Obispo, they focused on Morro Bay as an area that could make a lot of sense, with its beach town feel and “perfect coffee weather.” Within just a few months of looking there, the BofA hit the market.
Enter the Bank of America deal where Jon says he got a call from his banker who had heard about it from an investor. It was 7pm and offers on the property were due the next day. After a whirlwind of phone calls with brokers, and a preliminary go-ahead from the MB planning department, they worked with their lender to figure out financing options and sent in their offer just minutes before the 5pm deadline the next day.
Nosing out several rival bidders, the escrow on the bank building closed a few weeks ago.Now there will be four Scout locations.
With the help of an architect and contractor the couple is working on plans to remodel the building focusing on customer experience, where they will showcase the new state of the art roasting facility and scratch made approach, along with warm and welcoming service. Already the city is helping with the process and the chamber is introducing the couple around to Morro Bay merchants.
Glass wall
The building has two levels and they will likely use the second floor for storage. But the downstairs is plenty big at 6451sf and will house a new roaster and commercial kitchen that will feature a glass wall, so customers will be able to watch the beehive of activity while sipping their java in the coffee shop. There will be space for merchandise as in their other shops as well.
Altogether, Sara expects there will be around 25-30 working at the new Morro Bay Scout location.
The coffee shop will offer take-out but the place is designed to sit and savor the product and even have some light breakfast.
Morro Bay has plenty of coffee places including Starbucks and the new Human Bean drive-thru. But Starbucks is sandwiched inside Albertsons grocery store with not much space for savoring.
There are other places in town for coffee but the Scout location will be the largest considering the old bank building is 8451sf including a 2000sf second floor. The property sits on most of a block with a large parking lot behind.
“We don’t spend time thinking about competition – our efforts are really focused on how to provide the best possible customer experience day in and day out, and that’s what seems to work best for us” says Sara.
It may take some months before remodeling of the building is done and they are ready to open.