For years, a quiet, well-dressed older man walked trays of morning glory muffins out to the tables at Java Man on Pier Avenue. Sometimes he worked the register, and now and then he waved off a customer's payment. In its November 2025 profile, Easy Reader reported that many longtime regulars only found out later that this man, Rick Hankus, owned the place.
That detail explains this month's news. Hankus kept his own role small on purpose. Easy Reader noted that he regularly declined to be photographed when Java Man won its Best of the Beach coffee shop awards and pointed the credit to his crew instead. Because the crew was always the public face of his two Hermosa businesses, Java Man and Ocean Diner Café can change owners and keep almost everything a regular would notice.
What Changed in October
In his A La Carte column of October 7, 2026, Easy Reader's Richard Foss reported that South Bay Hospitality Group now owns Java Man and Ocean Diner Café. The group's partners are Brian Eldridge and Patrick Mescall. The same item said customers were relieved to hear the crews are staying, and its photo caption named two Java Man staffers who are staying on, Daniel Nava and the barista Easy Reader's 2025 profile calls Nick Herrera.
The handoff also reaches past the two cafés. According to Foss, the group has already run Eat At Joe's for more than a year. He wrote that if you hadn't noticed, it's because they mostly left everything as it was, and he called that a good sign for anyone who loves these places the way they are.
So far, no plans have been reported beyond keeping the staff. No menu changes, renovations or new hours have been announced. When this was written, the South Bay Hospitality Group site did not yet list either café among its businesses.
The Counter Has Always Been the Institution
The crews matter because of how long they've been there. Easy Reader's 2025 profile included a photo of the Java Man crew captioned with each person's tenure.
- Nick Herrera, captioned "Don't Call Me A Barrista," 27 years
- Daniel "Fast Hands" Nava, 27 years
- Jesus "Chuey" Garcia, 19 years
Java Man opened in 1992, so the two longest-serving baristas have been there for most of its history.
Ocean Diner's history goes back even further. The same profile says a friend helped Hankus buy a diner on Aviation Boulevard in 1986. Easy Reader identifies it as Granny's Diner, though the diner's own history calls it "Grandma's." He renamed it Ocean Diner and kept the chef, Emigdio Nunez, whom Easy Reader described in late 2025 as still running the kitchen. The profile also shows Hankus with Ocean Diner crew members Martin Rodriquez, Jose Rodriquez and Jame Avila, whom it describes as a crew of more than two decades.
That means the chef at 959 Aviation Boulevard has outlasted one ownership change already. Ocean Diner still lists the homestyle breakfast and lunch it's known for, including French toast, breakfast enchiladas, meatloaf and homemade desserts.
The Buyers Collect Old Places to Keep Them Old
New owners at a beloved diner usually mean a remodel. This group's record points the other way. In November 2025, Easy Reader ran a feature called "Tiki Town" that described Eldridge and Mescall as collecting and reviving South Bay restaurant classics that would otherwise have disappeared.
"They're like our dinosaurs," Eldridge told Easy Reader, "that we just keep alive, keep going, keep growing."
They have a track record to back that up. The partners met as bartenders at Salt Creek Grill in El Segundo in 2007. In 2017 they opened Paddy O'Brien's Irish Pub in Redondo Beach in a space that had been O'Hearns for decades. Since then they have revived The Torrance Tavern, the Hula Hula Room, the Bounty Room and the Sly Fox in Lawndale.
Eat At Joe's is the closest parallel to the Hermosa cafés. It's a Redondo Beach breakfast spot that dates to 1969 and is known for its "John Wayne" special. Easy Reader reported that Eldridge and Mescall took it over in 2024, stepped in to keep it from closing for good, and became only the third owners in 55 years. A year and more later, Foss's summary was that they had mostly left it alone.
Mescall explained the approach to Easy Reader in terms that fit Java Man closely: "We love the little community gathering places where it's really the stamp of the neighborhood. They go away often in Southern California. And they don't come back once they're gone."
The group already had a place in Hermosa before this purchase. In its 2025 feature, Easy Reader called Tiki Kai Hermosa Beach's newest restaurant and the team's biggest venture so far. Foss pointed out the unusual pairing: a group best known for cocktail bars now owns two places better known for morning coffee and big homestyle breakfasts.
What Hankus Left on Pier Avenue
The parts of Java Man the new owners are inheriting were built over three decades. The coffeehouse sits at 157 Pier Avenue in a beach bungalow built in 1929, and its menu covers coffee, baked goods made in-house, soups, sandwiches and panini. Easy Reader reported that Hankus modeled it on a beatnik-era coffeehouse like Hermosa's Insomniac in the 1950s, where writers wrote and musicians and painters showed their work. He opened it in 1992, the same year Starbucks went public. When wifi arrived in 2000, Java Man became a shared workspace, and it still offers a table and a connection for the price of a coffee and a muffin.
In 2010, the city removed street parking on upper Pier Avenue for a redesign that was supposed to take a few months and took nearly a year. The redesign added the parkette where Java Man customers now drink their coffee outside.
Getting there by bike got a little easier this fall. On September 24, 2026, the City of Hermosa Beach announced seven new branded bike racks at the northeast corner of Hermosa Avenue and Pier Avenue, next to Los Angeles Ale Works, to add downtown bike parking.
The Part of the Legacy That Never Had a Storefront
Some of what Hankus built in Hermosa never had a storefront. According to the Daily Breeze, he moved to Hermosa Beach in 1979, began a two-year term as president of the Chamber of Commerce in 1998, and was named the Chamber's Man of the Year in 2002. Easy Reader reported that the 2002 honor recognized his work with Big Brothers and AIDS support groups. It also reported that members of the Hermosa Woman's Club, Sister City club, Kiwanis and Rotary knew him as the person to ask for coffee and baked goods for a fundraiser.
For more than a dozen years, he also ran the kitchen at the Mama Liz Thanksgiving Dinner at the Hermosa Kiwanis Club, where volunteers served turkey dinners and pumpkin pie to 400 to 600 people each year. The dinner started before his time. Easy Reader traced it to "Mama" Liz Turner, who served free Thanksgiving meals at Garden of Eden, the downtown Hermosa restaurant she ran with her son in the early 1980s. After it closed, she moved the tradition to the Kiwanis Hall. The club's hall is at 2515 Valley Drive. As of October 12, 2026, we haven't found a public announcement of the 2026 dinner or who will run its kitchen. The Hermosa Beach Kiwanis site is the place to check for that.
The coffee, the muffins, Nunez's kitchen and the baristas with 27 years behind the counter now belong to a group that describes its work as keeping neighborhood gathering places alive, and that mostly left Eat At Joe's unchanged after taking it over. The Thanksgiving kitchen at 2515 Valley Drive was never part of either business, so it didn't come with the sale.
Small local businesses in Hermosa like Java Man and Ocean Diner keep going because longtime crews stay. At The Grady Group, we follow those changes along Pier Avenue and Aviation Boulevard closely because they shape what daily life in Hermosa Beach is like. If you'd like to talk about what's changing in your part of the Beach Cities, we're glad to start that conversation over coffee.
