Ballast Coffee

Great place to work. Indoor and outdoor seating.

Nice cafe with good coffee and some pastries, but not a good place to work because wi-fi is always out.

Cute cafe with a nice staff, but the wifi is awful. I love coming here to work (as do others based on the amount of people I see working on their laptops) but it’s no longer a reliable place to get work done if you need access to the internet.

Incredible place to remote work. Garden vibes are impeccable, staff is friendly and helpful, coffee was amazing, the pastries were great!

Ordered a Ballast Latte and it was to die for! By far one of the best iced lattes I've ever had. I give three stars simply because the barista who was working the morning shift on 3/12/2021 with a tall gentleman was rude and moody. When ordering, I mentioned that I wanted an iced latte but was given a hot latte. I left because I didn't want to make a fuss over it but I was really craving an iced latte to begin with so I decided to go back. I went above and by apologizing for the inconvenience and asked if she could make me an iced coffee not from scratch but by simply pouring my hot coffee into a cup of ice. I'm easy to work with. I wanted to make my life and her life a lot easier but she somehow took offensive to it and didn't make eye contact and was condescending in tone.

UPDATE - 5/11/23: so the wifi now appears to work, great! Now i’ll definitely come here more often to work 😀
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ORIGINAL REVIEW - mid-April, 2023
It's a nice cafe. Coffee options, whatever you may end up picking, are all solid across the board. Deducted 2 stars bc even though this would be a lovely place to work, the wifi does not work, even though they say explicitly they have wifi :( It's just a little inconvenient to have to work offline, esp when you are able to connect to the wifi, but said wifi does not have any internet.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, as I could just use my personal hotspot and keep working, but for some reason the cafe also appears to be a dead zone for cell reception. Obviously this is no fault of the cafe, but this does make the presence of wifi even more critical.

Owners, if you're reading this, if you fix the wifi, I will edit my review to 5 stars; the cafe is a really nice spot to study and work with solid coffee, after all.

Solid, sunny coffee shop. Good place to bring in a laptop and get some work done.

Beautiful cafe. And great for working from here. The barista was super friendly and gave great recommendations for the things to do around too!! Must try the Ube ballast latte. So good!! They also feature local artists which is awesome.

Great place for coffee and to do work. Has a nice patio in the front and in the back, including a room as well. Cortado was decently pulled and the “medium” bean was on the heavier side.

Great coffee drinks and a nice place to sit and read, do laptop work, or write.

Love the ube cappuccino here. Great staff, good good connection, nice ambiance, free wifi.

Ballast is one of my go-to coffee shops! They have great coffee (especially love the Ballast Latte) and also have mochi muffins from Third Culture + some other baked treats. There's wifi, with lots of space for you to work or catch up with friends.

What really bothers me though, is that they start cleaning intensely 1.5 hours before closing so you're surrounded by the smell of cleaning product / bleach, moving chairs / tables, and other disruptive noises starting at 2:30pm when they close at 4. :( It used to not be so early but I'm noticing this more and more. Cleaning 30 min before closing (especially using cleaning products around customers) makes a bit more sense.

Good place for a bit of writing. Take a laptop or iPad to be part of the crowd.

One of my favorite coffee shops in SF, but man they need some better wifi. Half the time it craps out, so try to have a back up plan if you're trying to work there.

Great place for coffee and you should try their donuts 🍩 Most people hang out here with their laptops. There’s is also an outdoor space at the back. There’s artwork 🖼 on the walls for sale. Meter parking available. I’m not sure if there’s always only one person working here it can get a bit of a wait if there’s a line.