Necessity Coffee Meets Demand with Two San Diego-Area Cafes

With one shop newly relocated and a second cafe now open, Necessity Coffee is asserting itself as a must-visit brand north of San Diego.

In January the company reopened in Encinitas in the shade of a mighty ficus tree on the corner of 2nd and F Streets, just four blocks south of its now-closed original location. This month, Necessity opened an all-new second location in San Marcos, a few miles inland.

“I wasn’t looking for two at the moment, but it was just such an amazing, awesome opportunity,” Necessity Coffee Founder Jon Runion told Daily Coffee News. “One is a gift and two is amazing. To be a kid in his early 20s that’s like, ‘I think I want to start a coffee shop,’ and 10 years later to have two cafes is just amazing to me.”

Necessity Coffee Roasters Founder Jon Runion.

Both shops serve coffee and breakfast in bright spaces dressed in the brand’s cream-and-coral palette with sage green accents. Menus balance classic and creative drinks pulled on La Marzocco Linea EE AV machines — a white one in Encinitas and a bright pink one in San Marcos.

Cocktail-inspired specials have included the Smoke Is Rising, an Ethiopian cold brew clarified with whole milk and finished with orange bitters, lapsang simple syrup and a bubble of hickory smoke. The Bloody Good Thyme combines flash-brewed Colombian coffee with blood orange, thyme, chinchona bark and Tajin over ice.

Unadorned coffees are showcased via Poursteady PS2 automatic pourover machines, highlighting natural flavors and flavors tied to extended fermentation processes in coffee’s post-harvest processing phase.

The approximately 1,000-square-foot Encinitas shop’s efficient kitchen combines local produce and locally baked goods while also supplying ready-to-eat items for the 1,600-square-foot San Marcos cafe. In addition to pastries and loaves from Split Bakehouse, Necessity offers toasts, tartines and breakfast sandwiches alongside a strong coffee program.

Runion currently roasts Necessity’s coffees on a San Franciscan SF-25 at the California Roasting Collective, a co-roasting facility in San Marcos.

Coffees from experimentation-friendly Colombian producers such as Elkin Guzman, Rodrigo Sanchez, Nestor Lasso and Sebastian Ramirez are imported with assistance from Ally Coffee. Runion works with Selva Coffee for greens from Costa Rica, Onyx Coffee for greens from Guatemala, among others.

“Everyone that we work with, I believe, is putting out some of the best coffees in their countries,” said Runion. “The producers are just fully dedicated to producing great coffee.”

Runion started in coffee at San Diego’s Dark Horse Coffee Roasters in 2013, then moved to the Phoenix area to join Union Coffee as it opened its first cafe. He returned to San Diego in 2021 and spent time helping open other cafes, including a stint at Copa Vida in San Marcos before launching Necessity.

Runion launched Necessity as an online roaster then opened first cafe in Encinitas a few months later in 2023 with a 2-year lease and a cart-based bar. Just a few weeks after the Encinitas reopening this past January, Runion was handed the keys to the San Marcos space previously occupied by Copa Vida.

“I already knew the space very well. I knew the layout that I’d like and how I’d like the bar to flow,” Runion said. “I basically had a whole cafe just sitting in my garage. When the opportunity came up, I was like, ‘yeah, I’m ready to go.’”

Since embarking on the second cafe — and with markets and tariffs in flux — Necessity has begun winding down its wholesale roasting business. Instead, Runion said he’ll focus on the shops, online retail sales and a healthier work-life balance.

“I want to just really be present in both cafes and really try to understand the community that I’m serving, and be a part of it,” Runion said. “Two [cafes] feels like a really nice balance of my family life and being present in my cafes. It seems like a really sweet spot for me and I want to make these things thrive.”

Necessity Coffee is located at 687 2nd Street in Encinitas and 250 North City Drive in San Marcos, California.

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