Nick Chaput is the owner of Dana Street Roasting Company in Mountain View, California.
He’s also the roastmaster you may see working the beautiful hand-built, U.S.-made San Franciscan roaster that’s a key feature of the cafe. If you follow your nose down Dana Street, the aroma of coffee will lead you inside, where a friendly greeting and long tables—inspired by the beer halls of Germany—invite you to sit, exchange news, and make new friends.
Born and raised in the Bay Area, Nick began his work life in Hollywood. He was a production assistant on Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, starring the young Keanu Reeves, in 1989, and took on Assistant Director roles soon after. Eventually though, he found his true calling at the Palo Alto Roasting Company in the Stanford Shopping Center.
“Roasting is part art, part science, and PA Roasting was one of the best places in the Bay Area to learn about roasting and making coffee,” Nick says.
Nick started Dana Street Roasting Company in 1997. The name reflects his intention that this coffee shop have an intimate connection to its neighborhood and to the people and stories of Dana Street. Patrons, both locals and commuters, are encouraged to linger and swap news. Over the years, Nick has seen romance bloom over coffee, singles getting married, those married couples bringing their kids in for hot chocolates, and now some of those kids off to college or working locally and coming in for coffee themselves.
For many years, Nick would host local bands on weekends. Customers would line-up around the block at busy times. But the pandemic changed things. Many businesses have work-from-home policies and large companies, like Google, run their own on-campus cafes. When nearby Castro Street was pedestrianized, Dana Street’s commuter traffic further faded and restaurants replaced retail stores, leaving the neighborhood empty in the afternoons.
While drink sales dropped significantly over this time, Nick’s coffee bean sales have grown. As one of the longest-standing roasters in the San Francisco Bay area, he now offers local deliveries of fresh roasted beans on Tuesdays and Fridays. You can order a Dana Street blend or a single-origin roast from a particular region, such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Rwanda or Sumatra. Many of Nick’s suppliers are small growers, some of whom he has been privileged to visit. These family-run firms prioritize quality and treat their workers well, as Nick has seen firsthand.
Dana Street Roasting Company has long been a favorite of coffee aficionados, from Silicon Valley and beyond, who brew their own coffee from freshly roasted beans. For example, customer Robert, from Carmel-by-the-Sea, makes the trip each month to stock up. Local company NewsBreak, which is headquartered just around the corner, has been buying coffee beans from Nick since it launched a decade ago.
NewsBreak founder Jeff Zheng was introduced to Dana Street Roasting Company in 2004 when he was working as an engineering lead at Yahoo!’s headquarters in Santa Clara. He would always stop by to get a light roast regular espresso on his way to work—and the experience helped him distill his vision for his own company.
“I was inspired by how Dana Street Roasting Company became a hub of the neighborhood, where people talk about family, news, weather, traffic, and more. This focus on sharing local information in a welcoming environment was a driving force behind NewsBreak—now the top free news app in the U.S.”
Dana Street Roasting Company has remained important to Jeff for two decades. Like many of Nick’s regulars, including many members of the NewsBreak team, you can often find him meeting friends, family, and colleagues there.
After almost 28 years on Dana Street, Nick still gets a thrill from chatting to customers, crafting the perfect cup of coffee, and directing the everchanging theater of life in his bustling cafe—a production as dynamic and captivating as any Hollywood set.
