Local coffee bean roaster Joebella Coffee opens a new shop in Downtown SLO

Our weekly Events Wire newsletter is your guide to Central Coast concerts, arts, and local happenings—delivered every Friday.

Send me event highlights!

Grab a cup
Joebella‘s new location at 311 Higuera St. in SLO is open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday and 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Snagging a bag of local coffee is easier now that Joebella Coffee Roasters opened a new location in Downtown San Luis Obispo.

On Dec. 1, Joebella moved into the space where Ascendo Coffee once was at 311 Higuera St. The former converted automotive garage is the business’s second location alongside its coffee shop and roastery in Atascadero on El Camino Real.

The new space is flooded with natural light and features local artists’ work on the walls creating a modern and clean yet comfortable environment.

Joseph Gerardis, the “Joe” of Joebella and creator of the business, said opening a shop in SLO had been a request of numerous customers, and once the Higuera spot became available, he decided to take the opportunity.

“It’s always sort of been on my radar,” he said. “So many customers would come and say, ‘When will you open a shop in San Luis Obispo?’ and we’d get emails all the time, ‘Where can I get my Joebella coffee in San Luis Obispo?’ So, I just thought it’d be a good opportunity.”

Gerardis said he’s roasted his own coffee beans for the past 24 years, initially roasting in his own backyard as a hobby. After moving to Atascadero in 2003 and getting more into coffee roasting, he said he and his wife Isabel Gerardis, the “Bella” of Joebella, decided to start roasting commercially.

Gerardis opened the first roastery in Templeton near Trader Joe’s in 2007, but the location and recession made business difficult, he said. After its five-year lease was up, they moved the shop to its current Atascadero location that features a cafe and glass viewing area of the roaster.

Before he knew it, Joebella Coffee took off—so much so that Gerardis had to knock down a wall for more space.

“We never expected it to be a real coffee house. Maybe people will come here to buy beans, maybe have a cup of coffee. It started off really small,” he said. “Then I realized people were coming in and not having a place to sit down. So, I rented some space in the adjoining building and knocked down a wall and made a big seating area.”

From then on, he said, he felt inspired to keep expanding the business, whether it was opening a new shop or selling coffee beans throughout the county.

The new SLO location offers a dozen different specialty organic coffee beans that are roasted in Atascadero, and customers have the additional option to create blends using the shop’s single origin beans. With light, medium, and dark roasts, Gerardis said they hope to offer a more multidimensional coffee experience.

“We’ve always just done dark through light blends and everything—we’re trying to make it more approachable. Everybody has their own palate—coffee is really subjective. I mean, it’s not at all one-dimensional,” he said.

Joebella’s menu features traditional Italian drinks like lattes, cappuccinos, and con panna—espresso over whipped cream—and also offers other cultural spins like a horchata latte or Tinto cold brew—a sweeter option of the popular iced coffee drink.

Another notable and limited time favorite is a bourbon caramel latte that features bourbon barrel-aged espresso, compliments of Willow Creek Distillery’s bourbon barrels.

Gerardis said he felt compelled to offer an Italian menu not only because of his own love for coffee, but because of his heritage.

“My dad’s 100 percent Italian. His parents came over from Italy and he was the first in their family that was born here in the United States,” he said. “But my dad, he’s really into coffee and he would always tell me how his dad, who came from Italy, came with a little hand-cranked roaster. They lived in New York, and every morning in the basement, he’d be roasting his own beans.”

Isabella Steffenauer is a new co-owner of the SLO location after working as a barista at the shop in Atascadero. With dreams of owning a gluten-free bakery, Steffenauer said she put that dream on the back burner to learn about running a business and work on developing the Joebella brand.

“I wanted to take that [coffee] knowledge and do something with it as well, and just go into the next big thing—and the next big thing kind of just happened to be this,” she said. “This was a big opportunity, a great, lucky opportunity it seemed, because it was just in the right timing.”

After Ascendo Coffee’s recent departure, Steffenauer said some customers come into the shop not even realizing the coffee shop owner had changed.

“We’ve had a few customers walk in thinking we were still Ascendo looking around and going, ‘Oh, what’s changed?’ And me having to explain, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re Joebella. Now everything’s changed.’ So, yeah, it’s kind of funny, but most people are familiar with the name. Now it’s just a matter of getting them familiar with the coffee beans.”

Currently Joebella offers small bites fresh from other local shops like Bramble Pie Company, Bread Bike Bakery, and Edna’s Bakery. Eventually, Steffenauer said she would like to have a kitchen to bake their own pastries and pursue her dream of creating gluten-free baked goods.

“It’s sort of a natural next step in a way, definitely—to have a bakery that could service all the cafes,” Gerardis added.

In addition to the Atascadero and SLO locations, Gerardis had previously opened a Joebella location on Spring Street in Paso Robles but he sold that shop to a former employee who recently rebranded it to Common Grounds. Gerardis also said he owns H. Cheval Coffee connected to Hotel Cheval on Paso’s 11th Street, which operates under the Joebella umbrella, just under a different name.

“The owner of Hotel Cheval came to us and said they wanted to do a coffee house, bakery kind of thing in there and asked us to help them figure out the coffee part of it,” he said. “And finally, I said the only way I would really do this is if it’s our business. We run it; we manage it. We’ll use your name, but it’s going to be the way we do it.”

Co-owner Steffenauer said that the Joebella way is providing intentional and quality products.

“We really push that we have specialty organic coffee beans. People hear that, they love specialty organic because they understand that that’s going to mean something for them and that bean is a good product,” she said. “We say that we make hand-crafted espresso … and when you say hand-crafted espresso, they know too that you’re not just making a shot from something. You’re really putting in the intention. You’re making sure everything’s calibrated.” Δ

Staff Writer Libbey Hanson is going down the rabbit hole of hand-cranked coffee roasters. Send your favorite roast to lhanson@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Year in Review 2024.