Voyager Craft Coffee Cruises Into Cupertino with Largest Shop Yet

The new Voyager Craft Coffee shop in Cupertino, California. All images courtesy of Voyager Craft Coffee.

The journey continues into a new California town for San Jose-based Voyager Craft Coffee with the opening of its first Cupertino cafe, the company’s largest shop to date.

Doors opened earlier this month to what is Voyager’s fourth retail location overall. Beneath the high ceilings of the 1,900-square-foot space, mid-century modern shelving and gem-shaped pendant lights descend over a curvy and colorfully tiled bar.

The bright blue powder coat of a 3-group La Marzocco Strada AV machine echoes the bright blue paint of the building’s exterior.

Voyager Craft Coffee Owner Sameer Shah told Daily Coffee News the design sought to create a lively community space where conversations also remain in motion.

“We built this out in the midst of the pandemic when most coffee shops were downsizing and embracing spaces with ‘takeaway friendly’ square footage,” Shah told Daily Coffee News. “We wanted to buck that trend in a big way since we believe strongly in the power of, and need for, community spaces where our neighbors can meet and feel welcome.”

While each Voyager cafe design emphasizes coffee craft at the bar, each maintain their own specific look and feel. In Cupertino, the shop boasts copper and concrete surfaces along with steel and hickory wood, with accents of midnight blue, blush pink and mauve.

Forty-nine seats inside and another 50 outside offer ample opportunity for guests to enjoy drinks crafted from beans roasted on the company’s 15-kilo-capacity Giesen machine in its Palo Alto roastery.

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In its green coffee sourcing program, Shah said Voyager has adopted a benchmark of paying an average of roughly three times the commodity price of arabica coffee, a.k.a. the “C price.”

“Not every coffee is three times C-market, since Brazil is such a prolific mechanized coffee producing country,” said Shah. “But we average out to three times, across the board.”

Voyager was founded in 2015 as a mobile coffee bar prior to opening its first cafe the following year in Santa Clara. Its second shop came three years later in downtown San Jose, followed by a third shop in 2020, located on The Alameda near Santa Clara University.

Cakes, cookies, croissants and other goods have also begun flowing from a bakery that launched at the Alameda SCU location. The four-person baking team led by Cordon Bleu graduate Stephanie Browne supplies 100% of the company’s demand, and at the end of every day, all unused baked goods are donating as part of the company’s push for zero food waste.

“We sell over 12,000 pastries each month,” said Shah. “Our plans for baking are big. Once we expand capacity by eight times what we currently have, we’ll be able to really showcase the talent of our team, and put Voyager as a bakery — independent of our brand as a roaster and cafe — on the map.”

That uptick in capacity is slated to happen later this year when the company relocates its roasting and baking operations into an expansive 4,000-square-foot facility in midtown San Jose with a training lab, office space, and a walk-up coffee bar for retail coffee and pastry service for the neighborhood.

The new Voyager Craft Coffee shop is located at 20807 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 200, in Cupertino. Tell DCN’s editors about your new coffee shop or cafe here.