Mast has the best coffee actually roasted in Sacramento if you brew your own, but the drinks in their cafes are always lackluster. Temple’s drinks are on point but I feel like they haven’t scaled well on the roasting side.

I think it’s wild how this happens, and how (relatively) common it is. We have a few businesses in town here that fall into that same issue - either they roast really well and phone it in on drinks in cafe, or the cafe is excellent but the in-house roasting just doesn’t meet the bar.

Though the big nominee I would have had for that award shifted their roasting program last fall and now the coffee is kind of crummy in addition to lackluster drinks in-cafe.

My absolute favourite case there is a company whose cafes do a phenomenal job of making their coffee taste normal, but take some home and those beans are consistently roasted like someone back at the factory is trying to craft bean-shaped satire of Specialty light roasts. It would be art if it was deliberate, but they’re completely straight-faced and earnest that they roast the absolute best coffee in the city and anyone who doesn’t agree is an uncultured boor who doesn’t really like coffee. I wish I was kidding.