The Crocker Art Museum has a new caffeine draw inside its Teel Family Pavilion, with Midtown roaster Anchor & Tree now running a craft-coffee and lunch program on-site. The café is open to both museum visitors and anyone who wanders in off the street, no ticket required, giving downtown workers and families an easy stop for espresso between gallery walks. The museum keeps the café running during evening programs and adds bar service for select events.
Anchor & Tree first arrived at the Crocker this fall as a pop-up, then graduated into the museum’s longer-term food program, owner Casey Albert told Abridged. “We’ve always loved the artistic side of the business,” Albert said, describing how small-batch roasting fits naturally into the museum setting. The partnership gives Anchor & Tree a fresh downtown showcase and introduces museumgoers to the roaster’s lighter, origin-forward coffee style.
Small-Batch Roasting on Display
Inside the Crocker, Anchor & Tree roasts its beans in six-pound batches on a compact setup, a scale that lets the team fine-tune roast profiles and show guests how different approaches affect flavor, according to the Sacramento Bee. The café uses an electric Bellwether roaster, and Bellwether says its all-electric systems can cut the carbon footprint of on-site roasting by about 87 percent compared with traditional gas-powered machines. That small-scale, transparent roasting is part of the owners’ push to turn each cup into a low-key learning moment inside the museum.
Menu Riffs and Hours
The café menu leans vegetarian, with more than half of its dishes meatless, and it has some fun with art-inspired names like the BL-Thiebaud, avo-Kahlo tartine and banh Monet, per Abridged. The Crocker lists café hours as Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; the museum’s address is 216 O St., and the café area is open to non-ticketed guests, according to the Crocker Art Museum. Whole beans and pastries are available to take home from both the museum counter and the Midtown shop.
Anchor & Tree’s main roastery and walk-up counter sits in Midtown at 1412 16th Street, where the team roasts most of the beans served at the Crocker, according to the company’s website. For visitors, the setup makes it easy to try the lighter roasts during a museum visit, then pick up fresh beans afterward. With rotating exhibitions upstairs and a steady coffee program downstairs, the café is expected to remain a relaxed but central part of the Crocker’s daytime scene.
