Things I Love: Better Buzz Coffee

Yesterday I told you about our little San Diego beach weekend but what I didn’t tell you was that I fell in love while we were in San Diego. Not with a person (I already have my hands full with David) but with a coffee shop. An extremely cool coffee shop.

Better Buzz Coffee is a small chain of coffee shops in the San Diego Metro area. They have five locations, including the one we visited in Mission Beach, plus their coffee roasting facility that is open to the public by appointment. The first morning in San Diego we went out in search of coffee in the morning. Really, any coffee would have done at that point because we were in desperate need of some caffeine, but we lucked out when we stumbled upon this ultra-hip little shop on the main road. The line was out the door, so we knew that we were onto something. People were walking by with glass jars of oatmeal and açai bowls that were heaped with berries, coconut and sliced bananas. And then there was the coffee. It smelled absolutely divine and my caffeine headache was starting to dissipate from the smell alone (sort of like a contact high, but with caffeine). I’m pretty boring when it comes to coffee and usually opt for a nonfat latte, but our friend Máté was more adventurous and ordered some sort of organic iced mocha topped with whipped cream. I have to admit, it looked pretty good.

As David, Máté and I waited in line, we saw customer after customer go by with these amazing looking açai bowls and we caved and ordered three of them. The one we got was called the islander and was topped with strawberries, blueberries, bananas and coconut. It was amazing – so much so that we took everyone else in our group back to the coffee shop about an hour later so they could all try it. They loved it. Everyone was hooked so the next morning when David and said we were going out to pick up breakfast, we had to get six açai bowls along with an assortment of breakfast sandwiches, pastries and coffee.

Seriously, if you are going to be in the San Diego area I cannot recommend this enough. Everyone there is delightfully warm and friendly, going out of their way to make you feel at home. A lot of coffee chains, even if they are small, can feel very corporate, but there is nothing corporate about Better Buzz. And just like their motto states, “Life’s better buzzed.”