Coffee Dose grows from 88-square-foot pop-up to four California cafes

Coffee Dose has come a long way from the 88-square-foot pop-up tucked into a corner of a hair salon. The specialty coffee brand, founded by Jeni and Oscar Castro, was operating four Southern California locations and planning two more openings in 2026, a pace of growth that Square said put the company in eight-figure territory.

That rise has been built on a menu and a look that do not try to blend in. Coffee Dose made its name with therapeutic lattes, house-made syrups, charcoal and collagen add-ins, and a food lineup that leans seed-oil-free, vegan, and keto-friendly. It is the kind of café concept that knows exactly what it is selling: not just espresso and drip, but a highly specific identity that regulars can spot from across the room.

The format mix has been just as important as the drinks. Coffee Dose has spread across a flagship café, a drive-thru called MicroDose, and Dose in the Box, a walk-up café inside a pink shipping container. That gives the brand room to test how customers want to order and linger, while keeping the same visual language and menu personality from one site to the next. For a coffee operator, that is the difference between a one-off hit and something that can keep scaling.

Square has been part of that growth since 2021, and Coffee Dose now uses the platform across registers, handheld devices, kitchen display systems, online ordering, merchandise sales, gift cards, and loyalty. Jeni Castro has said she views Square as a partner, not just a point-of-sale vendor, because the system helps her team make decisions across locations without starting from scratch every time a new store opens.

That is the real playbook hiding inside Coffee Dose’s expansion. The brand did not grow by sanding off the personality that made the first pop-up click. It scaled by turning that personality into a repeatable operating system, with enough tech, enough format flexibility, and enough menu discipline to keep the coffee concept recognizable even as the footprint kept getting bigger.