Manhattan Beach's Sit-Down Coffee Just Moved to Metlox
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
For most of the last decade, two addresses covered the slow version of coffee in downtown Manhattan Beach. Peet's, at 328 Manhattan Beach Blvd, had a window seat where regulars watched the boulevard traffic while working through a muffin and a New Zealand long black. A short walk away on 13th Street, Ocean View Cafe kept a bougainvillea-shaded patio a block from the Strand, poured mimosas past noon, and let dogs sit under the table while their owners worked through eggs and breakfast burritos. Both spots are leaving this year. Neither is being replaced by anything that asks you to stay as long.
That's the specific story hiding inside a bigger, messier one. Downtown Manhattan Beach has spent 2026 in what Kelly Stroman, executive director of the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professionals Association, called an unusual stretch of tenant turnover.
"The turnover in downtown Manhattan Beach is unprecedented right now and we are all talking about it."
Most of the coverage of that turnover has gone to restaurants and retail: Coucou moving into the old Nando Trattoria space on Manhattan Avenue, Beyond Yoga taking over the former Gum Tree storefront, Ounce of Salt opening in the old Rolling Hills Flower Mart space. What's gotten less attention is the coffee corner of that same churn, and it points somewhere specific: sit-down coffee isn't disappearing from Manhattan Beach. It's relocating, block by block, to one plaza.
Ocean View Cafe was one of the last full-menu breakfast restaurants within an easy walk of the pier, the kind of place where surfers stopped after a morning session and cyclists paused mid-loop down the Strand. Alfred Coffee has signed the lease for that 13th Street space. Alfred's own menu centers on specialty lattes, matcha, cold brew, and pastries, the same lineup you'd find at any of its other Los Angeles locations, and the brand markets itself around giving customers "every reason to stay." But a latte counter and a hot-breakfast restaurant with a mimosa list are not the same category of stop. Whatever replaces Ocean View Cafe on that walk street, it won't be a place to order eggs and linger over a second cup on a Sunday.
The Peet's on Manhattan Beach Blvd has closed. One longtime reviewer used to call that stretch of the boulevard downtown's "Big 3," a nod to the cluster of competing coffee chains sitting within sight of each other. Blank Street Coffee has signed the lease to take Peet's spot, and on the surface this looks like the smaller swap of the two: both chains sell espresso drinks and pastries.
The context around Blank Street is what makes it worth a second look. In April 2026, the Financial Times reported the chain was in talks to raise more than $100 million at a valuation that could top $1 billion, and its own marketing leans on frictionless app ordering, built to get a drink into your hand and get you moving. That same year, Blank Street made its Los Angeles debut in Beverly Hills, with Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, the Malibu coast, and Studio City announced as the next neighborhoods on its list. Manhattan Beach wasn't on that announced list, but the signed lease on the boulevard puts it in the same expansion window, alongside the same tier of coastal and hillside neighborhoods a fast-scaling, venture-backed coffee brand is choosing to bet on this year.
If sit-down coffee is leaving both the boulevard and the walk street, it hasn't left downtown. It's consolidating half a block over, at Metlox Plaza.
Bacio di Latte, the Italian gelato brand known for small-batch flavors made fresh with organic milk and cream, opened there this year with an affogato bar built specifically for pairing a scoop with a shot of espresso, the kind of order that takes fifteen unhurried minutes rather than five rushed ones. A few doors down, Great White, a Venice cafe opening its sixth location, moved into the former Pitfire Pizza space with its own espresso bar, fresh juices, grain bowls, and fish tacos, on a patio that runs from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. And in the space Lemonade used to occupy, Sogna Toscana got the green light from the Planning Commission this summer to build out a Tuscan restaurant centered on espresso and a wine bar, with its own patio facing the boulevard.
None of these three businesses opened because of the others. But set next to each other, over the same few months that took away downtown's last brunch patio and swapped one member of its "Big Three," they turn Metlox into the plaza absorbing what the boulevard and the walk street are shedding.
Laid out together, the pattern is hard to miss:
None of this changes whether Manhattan Beach has coffee. It's not short on caffeine and it won't be. What's changing is where the fifteen-minute version of it lives. A year ago, a slow cup on the boulevard or a lingering breakfast on the walk street were both still on the table. Now both of those addresses are trading toward faster service, and the plaza built around Metlox is quietly becoming the spot for anyone who still wants to sit down with an affogato or a glass of wine instead of ordering ahead on an app.
If you've been wondering why your usual coffee stop feels different lately, or why Metlox suddenly has a line for gelato at 9 p.m., this is the mechanism. It's not one closure. It's three separate leases pointing the same direction.
Reading a neighborhood down to this level of detail, which storefronts are changing hands and why it matters for the people who live above and around them, is the kind of groundwork Alexandra Gauss and the team at Gauss Real Estate Group put into Manhattan Beach every day, whether the subject is a coffee lease or a listing three doors down. If you're thinking about your next move in the South Bay and want someone who already knows which plaza is becoming the new gathering spot, let's start the conversation today.
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