For a long time, the move for a good cup of coffee in Riverside was to leave town.
Stevie Hasemeyer, co-founder and owner of Arcade Coffee Roasters, remembers making the drive himself. As a student, he'd point the car toward Los Angeles or Orange County, because that's where the good coffee and the good food were. It bugged him. "I was tired of LA and Orange County having all the good coffee and food and felt like we deserved to have good things too," he said. What began about 13 years ago as a tiny roastery — a pop-up Hasemeyer ran out of a roasting warehouse with co-founder Shane Levario — grew out of a plain desire to serve the community he was tired of driving away from. Hasemeyer said he knew it might actually become something the day strangers started showing up. "The test," he said, "was whether I could get people other than my friends and family to believe in what we were doing."
Today, Arcade is three cafes, and this summer it's making the opposite case: that there's more than enough reason to stay. The pitch is called Tour de Arcade, and it's built to walk regulars through all three rooms.
The mechanics are simple. Join Arcade Rewards, opt into the Tour de Arcade quest in the app, and it maps you to all three cafes in whatever order you like. The only ask is that you try a food item at each stop. "Every cafe has a menu curated to its strength, so this is really an invitation to taste what each one does best," said Shane Correia, Arcade's marketing director. Finish the tour and you earn a tote — but the real point, Correia said, is discovery: "If you love us for one thing, there are two more places waiting for you."
The timing is deliberate. Summer is when people scatter — vacations, road trips, hauling kids from one thing to the next — and Arcade wanted to give them a reason to point that energy inward instead. "Riverside isn't a flyover town anymore," Correia said. "There's so much to do here, places to try, food to eat, drinks to discover." Tour de Arcade, in other words, is as much a case for the city as it is for the company.
It only works because the three rooms are different — same coffee program at each, but no two cafes built for the same reason.
The Tasting Room: where it all started
Pull up to the Tasting Room on Chicago Avenue and the sign out front still reads "Video Town." That's on purpose. The building was a video store in a previous life, and Arcade kept the old signage rather than scrap it. "We want to recognize how the store originated and how it allowed us to grow into what we are today," said Jasmine Hirdler, Arcade's marketing coordinator.
This is the origin room in more ways than one. The roaster and the production space live here, which means the whole company's coffee — every cup at every location, plus the wholesale accounts — comes off the machine on Chicago Avenue. Co-founder Shane Levario said the team roasts Sunday through Wednesday and never sits on inventory: "Always roasted weekly, so you get the freshest of the fresh."
You feel the production in the room. Hirdler said the Tasting Room draws the true coffee people — the ones who want to know where the beans came from and how they were handled — along with the work-from-home crowd, students grinding through homework and commuters grabbing a pick-me-up on the way to the office. It's the most hands-on of the three, too: the Tasting Room occasionally runs pour-overs, and every Tuesday it hosts a public coffee cupping, the same tasting ritual the team uses for quality control. It's a natural place to begin the tour, where the coffee does — and the bite to check off here is the chicken Caesar wrap.
The Bakehouse: the family table
The team has a nickname for the Bakehouse, the Canyon Crest location that opened in 2021. They call it "Bakehome."
The name fits. Tucked into the Canyon Crest Towne Centre with a big patio, the Bakehouse is the one built for lingering — families, kids, a slower Saturday. "It matches the attraction of the entire Town Center," Hirdler said. "Just a place for fellowship and creating shared moments." Here too, Arcade held onto the past: the "Jammin Bread" sign from the spot's earlier life stayed up as long as the team could keep it, a nod to regulars who knew the corner before Arcade arrived. It's the same instinct that led the company to take over the longtime Backstreet restaurant in 2023 rather than replace it.
The Bakehouse is also the company's actual bakery: every pastry and loaf served across all three cafes is baked here. The pastry case runs deeper than at the other rooms, and on weekends you can take home fresh sourdough— which makes the tour's food stop the easy part here. The menu is short but ambitious, and the picks are a breakfast burrito the staff swear by and a steak sandwich on house-made focaccia.
Arcade Downtown: the brunch table
The newest of the three, Arcade Downtown opened in 2022 on Main Street and leans hardest into food: a coffee bar, an open kitchen, a sit-down brunch menu and, on weekends, cocktails. Hasemeyer calls it Arcade's newest brunch concept.
Its regulars match the address: in the heart of downtown, the cafe fills with councilmembers and people working in the offices nearby. "You will always see a business meeting occurring over an amazing plate and cup of coffee," Hirdler said. Save this stop for last and the weekend cocktail menu makes a natural close; the plate to close the tour on is the steak and eggs — a top seller, and, Correia said, a very intentional play at that classic diner feel.
One roaster, three reasons
Walk all three and the logic clicks into place. "Each cafe serves a different purpose," Hasemeyer said. The Tasting Room roasts. The Bakehouse bakes. Downtown brings food and coffee together.
That bite-at-every-stop rule is no accident: the tour routes you straight through the three plates Levario is most protective of. Pull any one of them, he said, and "we would have a riot on our hands. I would be scared for my life." The coffee is personal, too — he calls the house-made vanilla and lavender lattes the "core" of the program — the devotion extends to things you can't order anymore: a seasonal confetti latte that surfaces only in January (Levario's wife, he admits, is annoyed it isn't year-round) and a couple of retired Bakehouse items, the "arcmuffin" and the original steak sandwich. His standing offer: "If you bug us enough, we may just bring it back."
For all the growth, the founders are careful not to take full credit for the neighborhoods they landed in. Asked how his corners of Riverside had changed since Arcade arrived, Levario pointed both directions. The areas have grown and shifted, he said — but "we have also been changed by the neighbors we have in each area."
That give-and-take shows up in the smallest stories. Hasemeyer's favorite happened at the warehouse: he and Levario introduced two strangers at the bar. A few days later, the pair came back — this time getting out of the same car. "It was our purpose fully expressed," he said. Two people who met at Arcade, driving off as friends.
That's what Tour de Arcade is really selling this summer. Not a tote, and not three punches in an app — a reason to stay, and maybe to run into somebody while you do.
More information: Tour de Arcade runs through Arcade Rewards. Join, then opt into the quest in the Arcade Coffee app and visit all three cafes, trying a food item at each. The Tasting Room is at 3672 Chicago Ave., Suite A, open daily 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Bakehouse is at 5225 Canyon Crest Drive, Unit 17A, open daily 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., with fresh bread loaves on weekends. Arcade Downtown is at 3870 Main St., Suite 101, open daily 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a cocktail menu on weekends. Learn more at arcadecoffeeroasters.com or on Instagram.
