Sextant Coffee Roasters — Restaurant in San Francisco

Came here when waiting for my costco tire appointment. Not a great retail experience overall.

They use digital kiosks to order your drink. I ordered a speciality drink - golden latte ($6.75)- with oatmilk (+$1) - plus tip - $10.50 - yikes thats expensive. It was a frictional user experience to use the kiosk because when i realized my drink was $9 before tip, i wanted to see the line items receipt but couldnt figure out what fees and tax was being applied. i tried to edit my order, the app took me back to the homescreen, then wouldnt let me edit, then the two employees who were standing there were trying to help me, i didnt want to be weird about getting a cheaper drink, so just placed the order.

I went to the back to wait for my drink. Its got a nice area to hangout, but it smells like urine in the corner. I moved to get away from the pee smell, got my drink, drank half of it, and was thinking to myself: i dont think there is coffee in this “latte”.

I asked the barista if there was coffee in it and she confirmed there was not coffee in it. I mentioned to her that its disappointing to pay over $10 for a “specialty latte” at a coffee roaster. She asked me if the kiosk mentions that in the description? I said i didnt think so. She didnt seem to believe me and walked over to the kiosk. She was surprised it was not mentioned, and she shrugged and said sorry and started to walk away. I asked her for an espresso and she gave it to me which i really appreciate.

Was going to give this place a two star review because it was expensive, frictional, smells like pee outside, but the employees were cool so three stars. I really dislike shady charges or lack of clarity of when it comes to “what are the individual line items?”Maybe other folks in SF are more comfortable with that but i am not… yet. Tbh if i just ordered from a person from the first place, i doubt i would have...

I think I might have gone on an unusually bad day based on the other reviews. We think that the machine or something was not clean or properly working. 3/4 people in our group, took one drink and threw it away….the 4th person is just to stubborn to throw away food or drink. We each had different drinks from espresso to drip, mocha and latte so we think it was fundamental with the beans going through the machine.

I ordered a mocha and I think the barista forgot to add chocolate? If that’s possible.

Anyway, we had to write a review because it was as bad as it can get. From expense to not a human taking our order to no descriptions of the items in the case, no cream or sugar stand, and they were out of brown sugar. All that being said, we would have forgotten all of that if at first sip, we were “ahhed” and satisfied. It wasn’t even drinkable….we dropped them at the first trash can and went to 711 and drove home.

The employees today did seem very nice and were helpful us with our questions and desires for brown sugar. They apologized for that.

The presentation was good, the guy poured it and it looked cool but it just tasted so terrible.

4 hungover people about to drive back to San Jose and we threw the coffee out! Do you know how bad it has to be for that to happen!?

$14 for quad...

Sextant is an absolute treasure, and I hesitated before giving it a review because I feel like it’s a closely guarded San Francisco secret.
 
Then I realized almost 500 other people have given it a review, so I figured the secret's out already.

We’ve frequently visited Sightglass, The Mill, David Rio, and a bunch of other spots, but we ALWAYS find ourselves coming back to Sextant, even when it’s out of the way. From their drip coffee to their cappuccinos and lattes, nothing compares. We've also started stocking their in-house roasted beans in our office and at home.

They offer the traditional range of beverages, but they focus on coffee FIRST — not overly sweetened coffee products you’d expect at Starbucks that often mask the the burnt flavor of other beans.

Our current favorite is a flat white with oat milk with one of their carrot cake muffins. It’s only a matter of time before the FDA officially declares this unbeatable combination as chemically addictive, but until then, I’m going as much as I can.

If you’re into high quality coffee, or you’re interested in tasting the difference between “okay” and “mind-blowingly good”, check out Sextant...