Modern Times Coffee, the caffeinated arm of San Diego’s Modern Times Beer, is building out a 2,500-square-foot coffee headquarters and taproom in the heart of North Park’s Brewery Igniter complex. The venue will pour a rotating lineup of cold-brew, flash-chilled and barrel-aged coffees on tap and function as the central hub for roasting and distribution, according to recent health department permits and industry reports.
The suite most recently housed GOAL. Brewing, which closed earlier this year after less than two years of operation despite solid reviews from local beer fans. Over the nine-year life of the facility, the same unit has been home to San Diego Brewing Co., Attitude Brewing, and even a non-beer tenant, hard kombucha brand JuneShine, before that company moved its headquarters to Scripps Ranch.
Brewery Igniter - launched in 2016 by developer H.G. Fenton under the “Craft by Brewery Igniter” banner - was explicitly pitched as an incubator to lower the barrier to entry for new breweries, providing turnkey brewhouses and tasting rooms so small, unproven brands could get off the ground without massive capital outlays. Seeing Modern Times move in as an anchor tenant complicates that original mission. Instead of giving the next unknown brewer a shot, the complex is now being leveraged by a once-national brand that spent the last several years shrinking from regional powerhouse to something closer in scale to the upstarts the program was created to support.
Modern Times’ trajectory helps explain how it ended up back in an “incubator” shell. Founded in 2013 and converted to California’s first employee-owned brewery in 2017, the company expanded aggressively across the West Coast before overextending and spiraling into financial trouble. By 2022, the business was in receivership and ultimately sold at auction to Maui Brewing for $15.3 million, which then closed multiple locations and shifted production to contract brewing with AleSmith in Miramar.
In 2024, Modern Times shuttered its original Point Loma brewery, cutting dozens of jobs and giving up the physical facility that had defined the company’s early identity in San Diego’s craft beer boom. Under current operator Duncan Ward, the beer, coffee, and hospitality arms have been reorganized into a patchwork of tasting rooms, contract brewing and new bar concepts that attempt to keep the brand alive without the sprawling brick-and-mortar footprint it once boasted.
For longtime followers of the brand, Modern Times’ return to a standalone coffee-focused concept echoes an earlier era when the company operated in partnership with Consortium Holdings, the powerhouse hospitality group behind Born & Raised, Morning Glory, and Raised by Wolves. In 2019, the two opened the Invigatorium in East Village - a retro-futurist coffee house filled with disco balls, Post-It-note dragons, and a velociraptor behind the bar - blending Modern Times’ coffee program with CH’s maximalist design ethos. That former collaboration has been unified with CH’s J & Tony’s Discount Cured Meats & Negroni Warehouse. Today, the Cathedral of Caffeination feels like a spiritual successor to that eccentric chapter, though under very different corporate circumstances.
Critics, however, may see something more sobering: a onetime industry star now wedged into a modular suite originally meant to help tiny breweries find their footing. If Brewery Igniter’s mission was to incubate the next Modern Times, the reality in 2025 is almost inverted - the incubator is now sheltering a brand that burned too hot, too fast, and is trying to rebuild from the embers. In that sense, Modern Times begins to resemble the very early-stage outfits it now sits beside, only with far more baggage and fewer second chances.
At the same time, Modern Times is betting on a broader hospitality play that stretches beyond this one North Park address. Downtown, the company is preparing to debut Timestead, a “retro-futurist” bar and restaurant taking over the longtime home of The Local Eatery & Drinking Hole and Resident Brewing on Fourth Avenue, complete with a full bar program, coffee cocktails, non-vegan food and an eventual revival of on-site brewing. Just a few blocks away in East Village, the brand is also operating Chronos Hall, a roughly 6,000-square-foot events venue meant to host private parties and cultural programming.
Fans of Modern Times may view the Cathedral of Caffeination as a hopeful sign that, after years of closures and quiet retrenchment, the brand is finally building again instead of shrinking. Skeptics may argue that opening a flashy coffee outpost while San Diego’s brewery incubator model quietly morphs into a safety net for wounded legacy brands says as much about the state of the local beer scene as it does about Modern Times itself. Either way, North Park is about to gain yet another highly designed space dedicated to caffeinated experimentation - and a new chapter in one of San Diego’s most tumultuous craft-beer stories.
The Cathedral of Caffeination by Modern Times Coffee is slated to open at 3052 El Cajon Boulevard, Suite 101, in San Diego’s North Park neighborhood. For more information, visit moderntimes.coffee and moderntimes.pub.
The Cathedral of Caffeination fits into that new, leaner model. Rather than building a roastery and café from scratch, Modern Times will refit an existing brewhouse into a coffee lab and taproom, pouring multiple coffee expressions on draft in a setting that nods to the brand’s old maximalist aesthetic while operating on a much smaller, more focused scale. Company messaging emphasizes a “community-driven” space where people can explore coffee the way beer geeks once chased limited-release IPAs.
Critics, however, may see something more sobering: a onetime industry star now wedged into a modular suite originally meant to help tiny breweries find their footing. If Brewery Igniter’s mission was to incubate the next Modern Times, the reality in 2025 is almost inverted - the incubator is now sheltering a brand that burned too hot, too fast, and is trying to rebuild from the embers. In that sense, Modern Times begins to resemble the very early-stage outfits it now sits beside, only with far more baggage and fewer second chances.
At the same time, Modern Times is betting on a broader hospitality play that stretches beyond this one North Park address. Downtown, the company is preparing to debut Timestead, a “retro-futurist” bar and restaurant taking over the longtime home of The Local Eatery & Drinking Hole and Resident Brewing on Fourth Avenue, complete with a full bar program, coffee cocktails, non-vegan food and an eventual revival of on-site brewing. Just a few blocks away in East Village, the brand is also operating Chronos Hall, a roughly 6,000-square-foot events venue meant to host private parties and cultural programming.
Fans of Modern Times may view the Cathedral of Caffeination as a hopeful sign that, after years of closures and quiet retrenchment, the brand is finally building again instead of shrinking. Skeptics may argue that opening a flashy coffee outpost while San Diego’s brewery incubator model quietly morphs into a safety net for wounded legacy brands says as much about the state of the local beer scene as it does about Modern Times itself. Either way, North Park is about to gain yet another highly designed space dedicated to caffeinated experimentation - and a new chapter in one of San Diego’s most tumultuous craft-beer stories.
The Cathedral of Caffeination by Modern Times Coffee is slated to open at 3052 El Cajon Boulevard, Suite 101, in San Diego’s North Park neighborhood. For more information, visit moderntimes.coffee and moderntimes.pub.
Originally published on November 14, 2025.
