Scout Coffee is now open in Morro Bay. Get a look inside the new cafe and bakery
The long wait is over, Morro Bay.
The new Scout Coffee café, bakery and roasting facility opened Tuesday, after 18 months of work converting the former Bank of America building.
Now, hungry and thirsty customers are greeted by the enticing aromas of freshly roasted and brewed coffee and goodies made and baked onsite.
This week’s debut was a soft opening for the new business in the circa-1950s, two-story building with a 6,451-square-foot footprint. It now boasts a new roaster and commercial kitchen with a glass, “peek behind the scenes” wall.
The new spot was busy Friday with longtime fans stopping in to grab a coffee and check out the space.
Cal Poly student Emily Smith was among those who visited the new cafe Friday.
“It’s a nice little getaway from SLO,” she said. “Obviously, Scout is well-known in SLO. And being able to go to Morro and having the same good coffee that’s always consistent is always a great thing.”
For now, Scout Coffee at 390 Morro Bay Blvd. Mondays through Sundays from 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., while husband-and-wife owners Jon and Sara Peterson, their baristas and bakers fine tune the operation.
“Well, we bought a bank, a literal, built-in-the-’50s, hopefully-we-can-make-this-space-awesome bank!” they wrote on Instagram and Facebook in August 2021.
“We are so excited to be a few blocks from the ocean, the air is so wonderful here and it always feels like ‘coffee weather!’” they exulted.
Proving the brand’s popularity, the online announcement received more than 3,300 likes, even though Morro Bay has no shortage of coffeehouses, with four others on Morro Bay Boulevard alone.
The new coffee emporium is the third retail unit for the popular, family-owned shops that offer craft-roasted coffee, house-made syrups, scratch-made pastries, curated goods and merch.
The Petersons’ other establishments are the brick-lined coffee ouse at 1130 Garden St., and Scout Two at 880 Foothill Blvd. Their HoneyCo Roasting operation has moved to the Morro Bay location, according to a staffer.
Another San Luis Obispo site sells Scout Coffee on the Cal Poly campus near the Welcome Center, but the Petersons don’t operate it, according to staff.
Scout’s coffees and shops have garnered glowing reviews and approvals from such entities as the New York Times, Sunset Magazine, The Guardian, AAA Westways Magazine and Food Network star Alton Brown, among others, according to the coffeehouse’s website.
Local polls consistently rate Scout as the best coffee shop, the site said.
All those accolades could be credited in part to the couple’s years of experience in coffee places.
Their training came from a mom-and-pop shop, Starbucks and Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz, where Sara became the retail operations director and Jon was the marketing director.
The Tribune was unable to reach the Petersons for comment on their new Scout location.
For details about Scout Coffee, visit scoutcoffeeco.com or the shop’s Instagram page. You can order online at www.scout-to-go.com/s/order?item=7.
Call the Foothill store at 805-439-2823 and the Garden Street location at 805-439-2175. There’s no publicly available phone number for Morro Bay yet, a Foothill Boulevard staffer said Thursday.
This story was originally published February 24, 2024 at 11:00 AM.
