Cecilia Kennedy said she and her husband Alan Kennedy have been roasting coffee as part of their Alpine Coffee Roasters business for six years.
On Sept. 25, they opened the door to their new sit-down establishment, The Well Cafe at 1945 Alpine Blvd.
“We’ve always had the plan and the vision for a coffee shop. It all started with that Alpine Coffee can right there,” Kennedy said, pointing to a vintage coffee can.
She was browsing around an antique store years ago with her husband, who was unemployed at the time when they spotted the old can.
“He asked me: ‘How hard would it be to actually roast coffee?’ so we got some green beans and we tried it. It turned out so fresh and good, we started sharing it with our friends and family and then we started Alpine Coffee Roasters,” Kennedy said.
Since then, “we’ve been running Alpine Coffee Roasters and waiting for this place to become available,” Kennedy said.
They signed a lease for the storefront in January and had made it through the rainy February season that proved challenging on minor construction and updates to the property. Finally, Kennedy said, they were “on a roll, getting things done and then COVID hit in March,” Kennedy said.
“It was tough because things just shut down, there was less availability of construction items, fewer people available to work, it really held us back. We also had a contractor who took us for a ride,” Kennedy said.
Just as they were about to open, Kennedy said, the Valley Fire passed through Japatul and Jamul, affecting the entire area for a couple more weeks.
Now past the multitude of setbacks and open to the public from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day except Sundays, Kennedy said their next goal is to host live music and entertainment on the garden patio.
“Once we get more staff our plan is to have entertainment on the patio, all lit up. Friday nights and Saturday nights we’d like to have live music whether it’s a guitarist or a soloist of some sort, we’d like to have desserts and ‘night bites’ created by my husband,” Kennedy said.
Her husband Alan Kennedy is a trained chef, Director of Food Services at the downtown San Diego Rescue Mission and “always thinking ‘what’s the food going to be, what’s the menu going to be’. We love both sides, the food and the coffee,” Kennedy said.
This is not her husband’s first coffeehouse, she said— in 2006, he started an outreach-style shop in downtown San Diego, The Fir Street Coffee House that served as a training post for homeless teens.
He has created a menu of sandwiches and salads, light fare to accompany the various coffee drinks on The Well Cafe menu.
“We also offer boba, which is something new for us but I don’t think anyone else in Alpine offers it, and we package and sell our loose leaf teas,” Kennedy said.
Eventually, she said, they’d like to grow into occupying one of the neighboring suites as a roasting area.
“We’d love to grow into having a roasting suite where people could come in and learn about the process, like a tasting room for single-origin and blended coffees. A lot of people don’t know coffee is actually a cherry and when you open it up there’s two green beans in there. When you smell it roasting, it’s amazing: it brings out the sugars and caramelization of the beans,” Kennedy said.
She also said it is “a really neat process to educate people a little more about how coffee is roasted,” and interesting to learn what people’s tastes are along the way.
“A lot of people say ‘give it to me dark’ but then you start tasting the roast and not the coffee itself. Also, people ask for it dark, strong and bold thinking they’re going to get a jolt of energy, well, that’s not where the caffeine is. The caffeine is where the green bean is so the lighter the roast, the more caffeine,” Kennedy said.
The family-owned, family-run shop includes nephews and grandparents as well.
“My oldest son works here, my other son helps out. We all had hands on, whether it was fixing something on the floor or the walls. My mom, my nephews, everyone,” Kennedy said, then gestured to the well featured on the patio.
“My nephew actually rebuilt the well from scratch so it looks like our actual logo, it has running water and has lights on it at night,” Kennedy said.
The well, she said is a symbol of where a community comes together, to fill up on the freshest and deepest waters.
“We just had to wait six years to be able to open up,” Kennedy said.
freshest and deepest waters, says cafe owner Cecilia Kennedy.
