Pomona Is About to Trade a 4,700-Square-Foot Building for a Drive-Through Coffee Shop

Pomona’s Planning Commission will consider a Dutch Bros Coffee proposal tonight at 3272 N. Garey Ave.

The plan is simple enough. Demolish an existing 4,700-square-foot building. Put up a new 1,025-square-foot drive-through coffee shop. Add the lanes, parking and site improvements that come with it.

Before punk ass Starbucks put a drive through on every corner, Portland had Motor Moka. In 1990, Coffee People founders Jim and Patty Roberts opened what is generally recognized as the country’s first drive through coffee shop near the Oregon Convention Center. The idea was simple: espresso without getting out of the car.

So yea, Portland got there first. Then California did what California does and turned a roadside coffee idea into a national drive through economy.

Owners Dane and Travis Boersma Grants Pass ©1992

Dutch Bros came two years later, starting as a coffee pushcart in Grants Pass, Oregon. Basically a street vendor. Oh, the irony. Now it is a national chain asking Pomona for a drive through. It made sense up there. Now it has more than 1,200 locations across the country, and one may be coming to North Garey.

The project needs a conditional use permit, development plan review and a variance from the Pomona Corridors Specific Plan. City staff is recommending approval.

This is not really about whether people like Dutch Bros. People do. It is coffee, sugar, caffeine, those granola bars OMG and a line of cars that somehow materializes at all hours of the day.

The better question is what Pomona wants Garey Avenue to become.

A major commercial corridor is being asked to give up a larger existing building for something less than a quarter of its size, built around the drive-through. That may be a normal transaction in Southern California. It is also a strange vision of development for a city that constantly talks about revitalization, walkability, local business and bringing more life to its corridors.

We keep getting the same answer: cars pull in, cars line up, cars pull out.

Again, Dutch Bros is not the villain here. It is a company doing what companies do. The Planning Commission is the public body deciding whether this is the kind of land use Pomona should keep making room for.

The commission meets at 7 p.m. tonight at City Hall, 505 S. Garey Ave. The public can comment before the vote.

Maybe it passes without much discussion. It probably will. But these are the small decisions that quietly build the city we later complain about. Maybe Pomona will eventually make room for a place to get a nice fresh salad, not iceberg lettuce from a messy salad bar or bagged lettuce that tastes like the store it came from. Something as simple as a market salad with creme fraiche, lemon, herbs, fried capers, and parmesan.

Planning Commission meeting September 23, 2026

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