About twenty years ago, Patrick Mescall and Brian Eldridge met as bartenders when Salt Creek Grille opened at The Point in El Segundo. They wanted a bar of their own. Their first meeting about buying one, the Redondo Beach pub they bought in 2017 and renamed Paddy O'Brien's, took place at Java Man on Pier Avenue.

"So we've always had a little heart of Java Man in us," Eldridge told the Daily Breeze. On Oct. 5, 2026, their company, South Bay Hospitality, took over Java Man and Ocean Diner on Aviation Boulevard.

A month into the new ownership, the menus, the names and most of the faces behind the counters are the same. That was the deal. The people who sold these two places wanted to keep the crew. The people who bought them have asked that crew to teach them the business.

A Sale Built Around the People Behind the Counter

Rick Hankus owned and ran both businesses with his husband, Tim Biggs. Hankus died in November 2025. Biggs told the Daily Breeze that the couple had already been thinking about selling so they could retire, and that they had talked with Mescall and Eldridge about it.

Biggs described what the couple hoped a buyer would do. "We ideally wanted to sell them both to the same person at the same time, keeping the name and the brand, because that's what obviously Rick worked for so hard for 40 years to establish, primarily keeping the staff."

The diner and the coffeehouse grew up as one operation under the same owners. Biggs put it at 39 years for Ocean Diner and 35 for Java Man. Some employees have worked at these locations for decades. Eldridge described how the handover will run. "They are teaching us for the next six months, so we can understand it because they understand it way more than we do."

Mescall told the Daily Breeze they will look for ways to run the restaurants more efficiently, but they won't "cut quality of life for the employees." Both partners have two young children, and he said the goal is "keeping the institutions alive, keeping cool stuff for our kids."

South Bay Hospitality already has a record of buying beach-city bars and keeping them going. It runs Tiki Kai in Hermosa Beach, Eat at Joe's and Paddy O'Brien's in Redondo Beach, The Hula Hula Room and The Bounty Room in Torrance, and The Sly Fox Irish Pub in Lawndale. Mescall told Easy Reader that Eat at Joe's "could have gone away," and gave the reason they keep places like it open. "When institutions start going away, everything starts to look the same."

What the Crew Has Been Keeping All Along

Both places have stayed the same for decades because they had little reason to change. Here they are side by side, with each detail drawn from earlier local coverage.

Before Java Man, the Pier Avenue cottage housed a plant store, a travel agency, a temp agency and several retail shops. Hankus told the Daily Breeze in 2019, when the building turned 90, that the coffeehouse had changed very little since it opened. On the first day in 1992, people were already lined up when the doors opened at 4 p.m., and the shop originally stayed open until midnight. Mescall told Easy Reader, "This became a coffee shop when there weren't coffee shops."

The diner kept its kitchen as well. In 1986, with a friend backing the purchase, Hankus bought Granny's Diner and kept its chef, Emigdio Nunez. Easy Reader reported in November 2025 that Nunez was still running the kitchen. Biggs told the paper that Hankus loved big bands and Broadway musicals, so he played 1940s music and decorated with framed World War II front pages and old toasters and waffle irons. When customers praised the "'50s theme," Hankus always corrected them. The diner's coffee was a freshly roasted blend of Kenyan, Sumatran and Colombian beans, and the menu said, "High octane is our middle name."

Hankus's public life in Hermosa Beach followed the same low-key pattern. He served two years as president of the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce starting in 1998, and the Chamber named him Man of the Year in 2002. For more than a dozen years he ran the kitchen at the annual Mama Liz Thanksgiving Dinner at the Hermosa Kiwanis Club, where volunteers served turkey and pumpkin pie to 400 to 600 people. Easy Reader also reported that many longtime Java Man customers never knew the soft-spoken man carrying trays of muffins owned the place. He sometimes worked the register and would refuse payment at random.

Mescall gives Hankus credit for the staff the new owners inherited. He told the Daily Breeze that Hankus had been the employees' "fearless leader." He was even more direct with Easy Reader. "Everyone's got a great thing to offer here, but no one's got a better team than we do. And that's pre-owning it."

What Might Change, Starting With What Gets Added

Mescall and Eldridge have described a few changes they'd like to make. So far each one adds something. These are plans the owners have talked about in interviews, and none had been announced as in effect when Easy Reader published on Oct. 21.

1. Ocean Diner open on Wednesdays. Easy Reader reported that the diner's Wednesday closures "will soon be a thing of the past."
2. Later hours at Java Man. The partners are considering keeping the coffeehouse open into the evening.
3. Local live music. Mescall named Mikey Jerome, a local musician who played at his wedding, as someone they'd like to book. "This is [Jerome's] favorite place to play. So, if we can have him singing on a Tuesday night, we'll make that happen."

Later hours would bring Java Man closer to how it ran in 1992, when it opened at 4 p.m. and stayed open until midnight. Java Man's own website currently lists Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. That page dates from the previous ownership, so check it again before planning around any change.

Mescall also described to Easy Reader how slowly they plan to move:

"We'd love to see what we can get away with. We don't want to scare anybody. It's only been a week, so we don't want to go in and make big changes. We will get as much feedback from [the team] as we can and then make small changes operationally."

He also told Easy Reader that the cottage's appeal comes from the building itself. "This is an ambiance you could never recreate. I love this building. I've spent a lot of time in this building. It is not shiny, you're not sitting in the Taj Mahal and everyone knows that."

The First Big Weekend Under the New Owners

Live music at Java Man is already on the calendar for later this month. The Hermosa Beach Chamber's Hermosa for the Holidays runs Friday, Nov. 20, through Sunday, Nov. 22, 2026, downtown. The Chamber's schedule lists the cottage at 157 Pier Ave. as one of the weekend's music stages:

• Saturday, Nov. 21, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Ford
• Saturday, Nov. 21, 1:30 to 3 p.m.: Hugh DeFrance
• Sunday, Nov. 22, noon to 1:30 p.m.: Craig Machen

Coffee at Java Man fits easily around the rest of the weekend down the hill. The Ferris wheel on Pier Plaza runs Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. and from noon to 9 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $8, sold at the on-site booth, card only. On Saturday, the Kids Creationz Market sets up on the Upper Pier Avenue sidewalk from 3 to 6 p.m., and Letters to Santa, sponsored by Beach Cities Health District, runs on Pier Plaza from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. On Sunday there's a storytime tent at Uncorked, a Nonprofit Giving Village from 1 to 6 p.m., a community concert by South Bay Music Connection, and the Rock for Tots concert. The tree lighting and Santa's arrival are on Pier Plaza from 5:45 to 6:15 p.m.

For anyone who wants more of downtown that weekend, we've covered how the Pier Avenue corridor has been changing and what a walkable day in Hermosa looks like.

Biggs told the Daily Breeze that the two businesses are "baked into the community" and said he hopes the new owners can "keep going as long as they can." For now, that means the same crew working the counters, the same sink behind the espresso machine, and possibly a few extra hours each week.

At Kristin Warrick we follow news like this because it's part of knowing Hermosa Beach block by block. If you have questions about a home near Pier Avenue or Aviation Boulevard, schedule an appointment and we'll meet at Java Man.