Food and coffee truck Spro Coffee Lab has been operating out of Mission Bay’s Spark Social SF food truck garden for four years, and soon owners Rich Lee and Liza Otanes will be opening a brick-and-mortar location in the Castro, at 500 Church Street, Hoodline reports.
Construction has begun at the new space, formerly home to German cafe Mauerpark, and Spro is on track to open this summer, hopefully by June or July.
“I felt like there’s a need for specialty coffee in the area,” Lee said in conversation with Hoodline about opening a brick-and-mortar in The Castro. “Being close to Dolores Park, I often hear people saying they want a specialty coffee shop near the park.”
The new brick-and-mortar marks a big milestone for the Spro Coffee Lab owners, who had to shutter the doors to their truck last year when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
“The first six months of the pandemic were brutal,” Lee told Hoodline. “We were doing 20% of sales compared to what we were doing.”
Spro reopened last June, and if the mobile cafe’s bounce-back proves anything, it’s that San Franciscans will always come out for good coffee. And Spro makes good coffee — they put extra care into their flavor extraction methods, like vanilla and mocha (they make all their own chocolate), and focus primarily on the flavor of the espresso.
“The neighborhood really missed us,” Lee told Hoodline. And we don’t blame them. Now, lets get those Madagascars (Lee’s take on a vanilla latte made without artificial sweeteners) over to The Castro.
