Voyager Craft Coffee - Cupertino

Everything poured at Voyager Craft Coffee in Cupertino is roasted by the company itself, on a 15-kilo Giesen at its Palo Alto roastery, and pulled on a bright blue three-group La Marzocco Strada AV that echoes the building's exterior. The shop opened in early June 2022 as Voyager's first in Cupertino and fourth overall, following a mobile coffee bar that started in 2015 and a first cafe in Santa Clara the year after.

House roasting and a serious green-coffee habit

The coffee programme runs on Voyager's own roasting rather than an outside house roaster, which is the main reason the Cupertino bar can hold a consistent line across espresso and filter. The owner's sourcing target is public: on average about three times the commodity benchmark for arabica, with variation by origin and market conditions.

Pastry is not a token gesture beside it. Cakes, cookies, croissants and the rest come from a bakery Voyager launched at its Alameda location, staffed by a four-person team that supplies every Voyager cafe, Cupertino included. The company sells more than 12,000 pastries a month, and anything unsold is donated the same day as part of a zero-waste effort.

Built to be sat in

Rather than a stripped-down takeaway counter, this was built as a neighbourhood gathering place, and at opening it was the largest shop Voyager had. It runs to 1,900 square feet with 49 seats inside and 50 outside, a substantial indoor-outdoor footprint for a coffee bar.

Studio BANAA worked on the interior around the brand's idea of coffee inspired by travel: high ceilings, mid-century modern shelving, gem-shaped pendant lights, a curvy tiled bar, copper and concrete surfaces, steel, hickory and accents of midnight blue, blush pink and mauve. Archways link the deep blue facade to the room inside, a window-side nook looks over the patio, and communal seating, custom benches, a concrete table and a wave-like concrete bench make it somewhere to stay rather than pass through. The project is known locally as The Coop, a remodelled former coffee house aimed at the surrounding college crowd.

Order an espresso and a croissant

Start with espresso from the Strada, since the house roast is the whole argument here and the bar is set up to show it off. A croissant from the in-house bakery is the natural companion, and it counts for something that the pastry comes out of Voyager's own kitchen rather than a wholesale box.

After that the room decides the order. If you are staying to work or to meet someone, take a table in the window nook or out on the patio; if you are passing through, the counter moves quickly. Either way this is a coffee bar with a roastery behind it, which is a different proposition from a cafe that buys its beans in.