San Carlos Lost Two Starbucks This Fall. Local Roasters Were Already Covering the Morning.

When Groovy Goose first opened on San Carlos Avenue, owner Nathan Conte would sometimes stop people walking out of Starbucks and other downtown cafés, ask what they had ordered and offer to remake it for free with his own beans. The San Mateo Daily Journal reported the story this fall. The Starbucks he was competing with stood less than 100 feet away. It closed for good in late September.

Before the chain cut back, the coffee run here was already handled by a few locally owned shops, and each one covers a different part of town and a different stretch of the day.

Which stores closed, and which one is left

KRON4 reported on September 25, 2026, that Starbucks planned to close 250 underperforming stores across North America. It was the company's second large round of closures in two years. Two of the 13 Bay Area closures on KRON4's list were in San Carlos, the same number as Santa Rosa:

• 1187 San Carlos Avenue, at the corner of Laurel Street
• 1135 Industrial Road, in the Best Buy parking lot

ABC7 reported the same two addresses the next day. The Daily Journal later confirmed that Starbucks had permanently closed two of its four San Carlos stores. The store at 856 Laurel Street is still open.

The Daily Journal also noted that nothing directly ties the Starbucks closure to how well Groovy Goose is doing. The two stores closed as part of a national cut, and downtown still has several independent places within a few blocks of the empty corner.

How the shop on San Carlos Avenue was built to compete

Groovy Goose is a useful place to start because its owners built it to match the chain store down the block. SFGATE profiled the shop in December 2025. Nathan Conte grew up in San Carlos and learned to roast at Social Hour Coffee Roasters on Maui. He and Siera moved back in 2021 to help his brother Christian open Drake's. They opened Groovy Goose in August 2023 at 1221 San Carlos Avenue, in an 87-year-old building that had been a women's clothing boutique. The space now has a disco ball and a roll-up garage door.

According to SFGATE, they then worked through the things a chain store usually does better. They moved roasting to a warehouse next to Alpha Acid and added an app for mobile ordering. They built a food program of pastries, breakfast sandwiches and avocado toast, and added a community board, wholesale accounts and holiday specials. Conte makes the seasonal syrups in-house. The pastries come from two Peninsula bakeries, and a San Carlos mom makes the cake pops. Siera spent years in specialty coffee shops in Hawaii and California, and she trained the staff and set up their training program.

"Anything we do, anything we produce, we want to have a super high bar that we hit. It's a really tough business."

Nathan Conte, speaking to the San Mateo Daily Journal

That December profile also said the Contes had added a mobile coffee bar for festivals and were revisiting plans to expand. No new permanent location has been announced since then. The Daily Journal lists the shop's hours as 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

Four shops, four parts of town

Groovy Goose has the most recent press, but the town's coffee does not run through one corner. The independents sit on four different streets, and the hours they publish cover different parts of the day.

Plantation has the longest history. A Daily Journal profile reported that the original owner bought the roaster in 1981. The same profile said Sue and Young Cheong have run the shop since 2000 and that Young roasted beans on site each morning. It also said the menu had changed little over the shop's roughly four decades. The shop sits on Laurel Street, a short walk from both the closed corner store and the remaining Starbucks.

Mints & Honey serves the south end of El Camino. The Almanac reported in April 2026 that the Teng sisters started the café in San Carlos in 2017 and opened in Burlingame in 2022. They were also expanding to 728 Emerson St. in Palo Alto, and no opening date had been announced at the time. The menu includes sweet and savory waffles and toasts, sandwiches, coffee, matcha, and fruit and milk teas. The café's own site lists it as closed on Tuesdays.

Papachay is the one with the clearest origin story. In its 2024 roundup of Peninsula roasters, the Almanac reported that the owners source high-elevation coffee from Peru and roast it in small batches in San Carlos. The shop also serves cascara tea, empanadas and pão de queijo. Its own site lists weekday hours only. Papachay is on Old County Road, as was the Industrial Road Starbucks, so it is the independent option on that side of town.

Downtown also has a Peet's at 677 Laurel Street.

Taken together, the hours show a pattern. Two of these shops close at 2 p.m., and Papachay is closed on weekends. Among the independents with posted hours, Groovy Goose stays open latest, until 5 p.m. every day. That is useful to know for a weekend afternoon coffee or for out-of-town guests who arrive after lunch.

The corner that is still empty

The storefront at 1187 San Carlos Avenue is a prominent spot. It sits where San Carlos Avenue meets Laurel Street, on the path between the downtown blocks and the Caltrain station. No new tenant or reuse plan has been reported.

The block is changing in other ways while it waits. The city's downtown revitalization page says Harrington Park is under construction, with completion expected in early 2027. The plans include a multipurpose plaza, public restrooms, seating, a rain garden and a tree grove. At an October 8 listening session at West Park Bistro, about 48 business and property owners and active residents heard a construction update. During the week of September 28, the city installed two information boards on the 700 block of Laurel Street, near Diddams and U.S. Bank.

Two upcoming events will bring more foot traffic to the blocks around these cafés. On Saturday, November 14, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Diwali Downtown takes over Laurel Street with dance performances by Kathakaars School of Dance and San Carlos Sitaras, plus crafts and food from local chefs. On Friday, December 4, from 5 to 8:30 p.m., the free Night of Holiday Lights fills Laurel Street between San Carlos Avenue and Cherry Street, with the main stage on Cherry. The city says Parks & Recreation presents the event with the Parks and Recreation Foundation of San Carlos. Plantation and Peet's are both on that stretch of Laurel, and Groovy Goose is just around the corner on San Carlos Avenue.

Until someone signs a lease at 1187 San Carlos Avenue, that corner will be dark during the morning rush. Groovy Goose, a few doors up the same block, opens at 7 a.m.

At LeDoux Group, we follow changes on blocks like this one because the small businesses that open and close on Laurel Street and San Carlos Avenue are part of what makes a neighborhood feel like home. If you're curious how this fall's changes in downtown San Carlos relate to the value of your own place, we're glad to talk it over, coffee included. Request your free home valuation whenever you're ready.