Coffee Pop-Up Opens Permanent Café On Altadena/Pasadena Border

Bevel Coffee, a specialty roastery whose owner spent three years selling espresso from a patio pop-up, opens its first brick-and-mortar café Saturday at 1866 N. Allen Ave. on the Altadena/Pasadena border, and becomes one of the first new permanent business locations in a community ravaged by the Eaton Fire 13 months ago.

The 600-square-foot space sits directly across the street from Prime Pizza, where owner Kevin Mejia ran a semi-permanent kiosk starting in 2023. The new café — funded through a combination of fire relief grants and small business loans, according to Mejia — will serve coffee roasted by Mejia in Monrovia along with pastries, bagels, and sandwiches. It opens at 7 a.m.

Mejia reportedly signed the lease in July. Building permits were not issued until November, and a final safety inspection was completed approximately February 20, according to Barista Magazine.

The fire wiped out 70% of Bevel’s customer base through displacement, Mejia estimated. Sales nonetheless held close to normal, he said, because remaining community members rallied behind the pop-up.

“We gave out drip coffee to whoever wanted to come and hang out while the ash was still in the air and the skies were black,” Mejia said, according to Barista Magazine. “People showed up en masse to support, and we had one of the busiest first days ever.”

A $10,000 grant from the California Restaurant Foundation, part of a $2.4 million relief effort for independent restaurants across Los Angeles County, helped keep the business running in the months after the fire, Mejia said. The brick-and-mortar build-out drew on additional fire relief grants and small business loans, though Mejia did not disclose the total investment.

“The city and the county and people in Altadena are really trying to support the impacted businesses,” Mejia said, according to Barista Magazine. “We would’ve had to be knee deep in loans to make it happen otherwise.”

Bevel is among a small number of new businesses to establish permanent locations in Altadena since the fire. Altadena Cookie Co. held a ribbon-cutting in October and was described at the time as the first new business to open after the disaster. CBS Los Angeles, in a February 22 segment, described Bevel as “the first new business to launch in Altadena following the Eaton Fire.” Neither characterization accounts for the other, and both businesses predated the fire in some form — Altadena Cookie Co. as a cottage bakery, Bevel as a pop-up.

Bevel Coffee, 1866 N. Allen Ave., Altadena. Grand opening February 28. Hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.