The San Francisco Coffee Crawl | Hacker News Reader

The San Francisco Coffee Crawl

adamheins.com

9 pointsadamheins11 comments

Can anybody tell me why no cafés in San Francisco stay open late? Sightglass closes at 7pm, Ritual at 8pm. The latest I know of is Haus on 24th St at 9pm. That's way too early for what's supposed to be a real city.

My theory is that it's the weather -- the evening chill in SF. I'm from the east coast and it also shocked me over a decade ago how everything (not just cafes) closes early in SF. The mission is actually a lot later than neighborhoods like SOMA, but even it is sleepy by east coast standards.

Portland is north of SF, but has no evening chill, so in the summer people will just stay out the whole afternoon and into the night. In SF the chill tends to break things up, even in summer time.

And that extends to business hours IMO. On the rare 10 or 20 days of the year where it's not chilly in the evening in SF, you can feel a big difference in the number of people out, which will affect businesses.

People in SF are early risers. I don't really get going until 2pm and I go to bed at 2 or 3am. That would work fine in NYC but not here :-(

If I had to guess, probably because most people stop drinking coffee after around 7 pm so that they can actually get to sleep at a reasonable time, and it is not economical for the shops to stay open beyond that time because of fewer customers.

But presumably that would apply to all cities. Portland, for example, has multiple cafés that stay open much later.

Not so. Economics in Portland differ greatly vs San Francisco.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

25 to 50% cheaper to live in Portland. Implies coffee shop will have higher expenses to manage in San Fransisco.

Before the remodel Ritual was open until 10pm every day except Sundays. I would occasionally do some work there in the evenings. It was convenient, but it didn't seem like they had enough traffic to justify being open that late.

Starbucks by my house is 24 hours.

By your house most likely means the one in laurel heights which I've wondered about why it was the only one for years. I think I have it figured out. First, low crime area, see 24 hours Walgreens for a rough estimation of where that is in SF. 2nd near UCSF (all nighter college students). 3rd near California Pacfic Hospital, Doctors and Parents giving birth want coffee at all hours. Making it economically viable.

You guessed right. The grocery stores in the center, bryans and Cal-mart, close early though, at 7-8pm.

Me and friends did a similar thing too, in Warsaw though!

After the third place we switched to decaf though :)

What's the coffee scene like in Warsaw and Poland in general?

Also, switching to decaf partway through is probably the smart thing to do :)

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