The big communal table is gone. So is the custom four-group Kees van der Westen Spirit espresso machine that anchored the left side of the room, and the sawtooth glass wall that separated the sheltered patio from the interior. Verve Coffee Roasters closed its Spring Street location on June 1, 2025, citing the 'evolving landscape of Downtown' as the reason a decade-long run came to an end.
Karpo tracks which cafes are actually open right now and which have shut for good, so you don't waste a trip on outdated search results or optimistic Google listings.
If you're searching for a work-friendly cafe near the old Spring and Ninth intersection, you'll need to look elsewhere. The 833 S Spring St address still stands—a large rectangular brick and breezeblock building with the 'Dancing Girls' sign on the exterior—but the benches, the Modbar pour-over station, and the free juice samples from Juice Served Here at the cashier are all gone. What remains is a case study in how a venue can tick every laptop-work box and still not survive.
What the Morning Shift Looked Like
Verve opened at 7am, early enough to catch Downtown before most of it woke up. The communal twelve-person table with benches occupied the centre of the space, and by mid-morning it was usually claimed by freelancers with MacBooks and AirPods. Free Wi-Fi was available with a code. The four long padded benches along the right wall offered square tables and stools for anyone who preferred a wall at their back.
Coffee came from Verve's own roastery: three single-origin pour-overs available through Kalita Wave filters on the Modbar modular system, plus the house Streetlevel seasonal espresso blend. The honey lavender draft latte was the signature, sweet and floral without tipping into dessert territory. A vanilla honey latte ran a close second. If you wanted tea, the Bowl of Soul—tea with homemade almond milk—was the quiet favourite among regulars who'd tired of espresso by their third visit that week.
Afternoon: When the Light Changed
By early afternoon the front patio came into its own. The outdoor seating area was sheltered and separated from the interior by that sawtooth V-shaped glass wall, which let you sit outside without feeling fully exposed to Spring Street foot traffic. Plants hung from and crept up the walls. Seven triangular-based stools lined a lower counter projection near the pour-over station if you wanted to watch the baristas work.
The space was bright without being harsh, thanks to the open front third and the single central concrete pillar that divided the room without chopping it up. Verve rotated its coffee options monthly, so return visits meant new tasting notes and different origin stories chalked on the board. Iced matcha with strawberry cold foam appeared later in the menu's life, a concession to the oat-milk-and-fruit-foam wave that swept LA cafes in the early 2020s. It was fine. The coffee was better.
Late Afternoon: The Laptop Exodus
Closing time varied depending on the day—7pm daily according to some sources, though other records showed 4pm on weekdays and 5pm on weekends. In practice, the vibe shifted around 3pm when the work crowd began packing up and the communal table emptied out. If you arrived after that window you'd find plenty of seating but less of the low-hum focus that made the place appealing for deep work.
The massive counter along the left side held retail shelves stocked with Verve's bagged beans and brewing equipment. Late-afternoon browsers treated it like a bookshop, picking up a bag of the latest seasonal roast on their way out. The pricing was upscale cafe standard—in line with other third-wave roasters but above your neighbourhood drip-coffee spot.
Why It Didn't Last
Verve's official statement pointed to the 'evolving landscape of Downtown' without elaborating. Translation: foot traffic, rents, or both made the Spring Street address unsustainable even after ten years of operation. The Arts District location—a few miles east and built around Verve's roastery and larger production facility—remains open, as do the Melrose and West Third Street cafes. Those sites serve different neighbourhoods with different commuter patterns and different daytime populations.
The Spring Street closure is a reminder that work-friendly doesn't guarantee longevity. Free Wi-Fi, communal tables, good coffee, and a handsome fit-out used to be enough. Now the calculus includes delivery apps, remote-work patterns that emptied office buildings, and a customer base that may not return five days a week. Verve made all the right calls on design and product. The location still didn't make it.
What It Cost, and How That Stacked Up
A single drink at the Spring Street location ran $6 to $9—the honey lavender draft latte landed around $7.50, the iced matcha with strawberry cold foam closer to $8. Add a pastry from the retail counter and you were past $12 before sitting down. The communal table was free to occupy as long as you wanted, but the implicit deal was one drink per ninety minutes if the place was full. It rarely enforced that. Most regulars bought a second pour-over mid-afternoon to justify the outlet access and four-hour working session. A full day—two drinks, a pastry, maybe a bottled juice—put you near $25. That made it cheaper than a coworking day pass but more expensive than the Arts District or Melrose Verve locations, where pastries were a dollar less and the house espresso blend ran $6 flat.
The other LA Verve locations undercut Spring Street slightly because they operated in less expensive retail corridors and didn't carry the same build-out overhead. Arts District had the roastery advantage—beans moved ten feet from roaster to grinder—so wholesale costs stayed lower. Melrose and West Third ran smaller footprints with lower rent per square foot, and that translated to menu prices that sat fifty cents to a dollar below what Spring Street charged. The quality was identical. The Spring Street premium bought you the sawtooth glass wall, the Dancing Girls building, and the fact that you could walk there from the Financial District in eight minutes. Once that convenience stopped mattering to enough people, the math didn't work.
Where to Go Instead, and How to Get In
If you're looking for a Verve experience, the Arts District location is your closest substitute—it's the roastery cafe, bigger and more industrial, still pouring the same beans. The Melrose and West Third Street branches are farther west but open and operational. None replicate the Spring Street layout or the specific light that building caught in the afternoon, but they'll give you the honey lavender latte and the laptop-friendly seating.
All three take walk-ins only; no reservations, no queues, no hostess stand. You order at the counter, grab a seat, and stay as long as the Wi-Fi holds or your conscience allows. The old Spring Street address is now a shell. Any hours or reviews still listed online for 833 S Spring St are obsolete. Check before you go, or save yourself the trip and pick a cafe that's actually open.
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Ask Karpo which work-friendly cafes near Spring and Ninth are actually open today—several have closed or changed hours in the past year, and search results lag reality by months. Karpo can also tell you which ones have the best communal tables and power outlets, and give you a live route from wherever you're coming from in Downtown.
