Mellow Nights on HaightNew

Anyone walking past Haight and Masonic would be forgiven for being confused by The Mellow. Why are so many people going into a barbershop? They’re coming out with coffee? I thought The Mellow was a plant store in the Mission?

That’s the way that owner Lo likes it. Opened in 2021, The Mellow in Haight Ashbury started as a propagation of the plant shop originally rooted in the Mission. That Mission location was equally multihyphenate: it was a floral-workshop-studio-at-night-plant-store-by-day-then-also-a-barbershop-oh-and-a-music-venue. “Every weekend we’d have music right there on the cement in front of the store. When we found the Haight location, we were like let’s take the musicians from the curb and put them on a stage now.”

So when Lo and her husband signed the lease for 1401 Haight St, the two thought: “we love plants. We love flowers. We love community. We love music. Let’s just do it all together. Let’s create a space that we ourselves would want to go to.” The shop was retail by day and music by night. It didn’t last long. With a BYOB policy and a $35 ticket, it was hard to keep the seats full. The pair hit pause on the live music while they worked on getting a liquor license: “It took 2 years. I also had a baby. We literally couldn’t juggle it all.” In the meantime, they introduced a coffee bar at the front with airy seating space and non-perishables shopping in the back, leading you to a two-chair barbershop on the top floor.

In July of this year, the original Mission location closed. Since the end of the pandemic, plant sales had been declining. Lo and her husband tried hard to keep the shop afloat: vintage clothing pop-ups, non-perishable food items, online sales. “We basically tried everything possible to stay alive, which I’m really proud of. Mission was able to stay alive for six years. So instead of being heartbroken, I’m like, we did it. I’m just proud of us. That was a good run.”

The spirit of the plant-store-that-was-always-more-than-a-plant-store lives on in Haight Ashbury, though. Now newly armed with its liquor license, The Mellow is ready to return to its late-night live music roots with a cocktail menu designed by Gillian from Casements and a lineup of local musicians. And the owners are still thinking beyond music: “We keep the five senses in mind. We like to burn incense, we want it to be visually appealing. And a part of that is eating or drinking: the taste of it. We want to have people come in and feel like it is an oasis and really hit on all the five senses… We’re not just one thing. And that could get us into trouble in a way where people come here and they’re like, ‘I want a plant.’ We’re not that anymore — or we’re more than that. We have coffee. We have music. We do this. We do that. We just can’t be pinned to one thing.”

The Mellow coffee bar is open 8am–6pm daily. Mellow Nights runs Thursdays–Saturdays from 7–11pm. For more information, check out @themellowsf on Instagram. For musicians interested in performing at Mellow Nights, you can answer the call for artists at app.mellowsessions.com