Component Coffee Opened in the Historic Planing Mill in 2018

Jacob Mishalanie

Oct 7

11 min read

Garden Plaza with benches, trees and a theater marquee in downtown Visalia, California

Photo: Visalia&LA at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

513 E Center St, Visalia 93292. Open every day from 7 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. That is Component Coffee's downtown Visalia flagship, and the company's own Visalia page tells its story in a single sentence: the store opened in the summer of 2018, in the historic Planing Mill building.

I am Jacob, and I like a coffee story that starts with a building. A lot of cafes open in whatever space the lease allows. This one opened inside a mill, in the middle of downtown, and then grew into a company with locations in three cities while keeping this address as its flagship. The Planing Mill location is where Component tells you it tested everything it has developed, and it is the shop its own page calls a staple for its hometown community. That is worth telling properly, on its own terms, with the Fresno and Tulare locations kept firmly on their own maps.

A Coffee Flagship Inside a Mill

A planing mill is a working building. It is where rough lumber gets dressed into finished boards, a place built around machines, dust, long rooms and wide doors. Nobody designed one with espresso in mind. That is exactly why the pairing works. When Component opened its flagship inside Visalia's historic Planing Mill in the summer of 2018, it took a piece of the city's working past and put a morning ritual inside it.

Adaptive reuse like this is one of the quiet pleasures of small city downtowns. A new strip center cafe can be pleasant, but it could be anywhere. A cafe inside an old industrial building can only be where it is. The proportions of the room, the materials and the way light moves through a space built for a different kind of work all carry the building's history into an ordinary cup of coffee.

For Visalia specifically, it matters that the flagship chose downtown. The city has grown outward along its big commercial boulevards, and a lot of daily coffee happens at drive thru windows on those corridors. Putting the flagship on Center Street, a few blocks from Court Street and Main Street, gave downtown one more reason for people to park, walk and stay a while. It also means that when the company tells its hometown story today, on its own Visalia page, the story begins right here on Center Street.

What the Company Says About Its Own Room

Component's Visalia page is short, and it says a lot. The flagship store in downtown Visalia opened in the summer of 2018, in the historic Planing Mill building. The store served as the test kitchen for everything the company has developed. And it has quickly become a staple for its hometown community, voted the Valley's favorite coffee shop.

Each of those lines tells you something. Test kitchen means this is the room where new drinks and new dishes were worked out before they went anywhere else, so a visit here is a visit to the place where the menu took shape. Hometown means the company thinks of Visalia as home, even after opening in Fresno and Tulare. And the Valley's favorite coffee shop is praise the company is proud enough of to print on its own flagship page.

The Visalia Times Delta noticed the opening early. In August 2018, the paper ran a feature on the new Component Coffee Lab and the big city flair it brought to downtown Visalia. For a downtown room that had only opened that summer, a feature in the city's daily paper within weeks is a strong start.

Full Coffee, Full Breakfast and Pastry Made In House

This is not a coffee only counter. According to the company's Visalia page, the flagship serves its full coffee menu and its full breakfast menu, along with pastries made in house. That makes it a place for a real morning, not only a quick stop on the way to somewhere else.

The kitchen keeps its own hours, and they are worth knowing before you go. The doors are open every day from 7 am to 5 pm. The kitchen runs from 7 am to noon Monday through Thursday, and from 7 am to 2 pm Friday through Sunday. A weekday breakfast needs a morning plan. A weekend breakfast can run later, which suits the slower pace of a Saturday downtown or a Sunday before a drive.

Pastry made in house is a real commitment for any cafe. It means ovens, early starts and a baker's rhythm running alongside the espresso bar every day. In a room that also served as the company's test kitchen, that fits. The flagship is where the whole menu, food and drink together, gets made and tried first.

For a visitor, the practical takeaway is simple. Come early on a weekday if breakfast is the goal. Come any time before 5 if coffee and a pastry are enough. And if you are heading up to Sequoia and Kings Canyon for the day, the 7 am opening lets you leave downtown with breakfast done and something baked for the road.

513 East Center Street, in Downtown Visalia

The address on Component's own page is 513 E Center St, Visalia 93292. Use that one. It puts the flagship on Center Street in the downtown grid, a few blocks east of Court Street and a short walk from the Visit Visalia visitor center at 112 E Main St.

Downtown Visalia is compact enough to walk, and that is part of the flagship's appeal. Mission Coffee sits at 112 N Court St, a few blocks away, open Monday through Saturday. A visitor can take in both downtown cafes in a single morning, then spend the rest of the day on Main Street or head east toward the parks.

Because the Planing Mill flagship is open seven days a week, it is also the downtown stop you can count on for a Sunday. A resident planning a Sunday morning downtown, or a visitor passing through on a Sunday on the way to the mountains, can plan around Center Street without checking a calendar.

More Than the Counter: Catering, Merch and a Coffee Subscription

The flagship is the location most people know, but the company's site shows a wider business around it. The main menu offers an online shop with coffee and merch, a coffee subscription, catering and a page for anyone who wants to apply to work at the flagship. For a resident, that means the Planing Mill cafe is not the only way to keep Component in the week. Coffee can arrive by subscription, and an office breakfast or a family event can be catered.

That breadth says something about how a downtown cafe grows in a valley city. A single room can only seat so many people between 7 and 5. An online shop, a subscription and a catering program let the same company reach people who never make it downtown on a weekday morning. The flagship stays the heart of it, the test kitchen where the menu is built, while the rest of the business carries that menu further.

For a visitor, the practical note is smaller. If a morning at the Planing Mill turns into a favorite, the company's own site is where to look for coffee to take home, rather than a third party store.

Three Cities, Each Room on Its Own Map

Component has grown since 2018. Its Fresno Tower District room opened in January 2023 at 620 E Olive Ave, Fresno 93728, according to the company's Fresno page. Its Tulare Del Lago room is at 1096 Leland Ave, Tulare, CA 93274, according to the Tulare page. The company's site gives each room its own page, with its own address, hours and story.

That structure is worth appreciating. It lets the Visalia page tell the Visalia story, the Planing Mill, summer 2018 and Center Street, rather than blending every room into one company description. A reader who lands on the Visalia page gets Visalia, and a reader in the Tower District gets the Tower District.

It also draws the line this post keeps. The Olive Avenue room belongs to Fresno, a city of more than half a million people with its own coffee scene. The Leland Avenue room belongs to Tulare, a separate city of about 70,000 just south of Visalia. Neither one belongs on a Visalia coffee map, and the Visalia flagship does not need to borrow either to be worth knowing.

A Downtown Anchor for a Valley City

Central Valley cities share a pattern. Growth runs along wide boulevards lined with drive thrus and strip centers, and downtowns have to work to keep people walking. Visalia's Main Street, Court Street and Center Street have that older grid, and a cafe that opens every day at 7 gives the grid a reliable morning heartbeat.

The Planing Mill cafe adds to that in a specific way. It is open seven days, it serves a real breakfast, and it sits inside a building people already recognize. Those three things make it easy to meet someone there, easy to bring a visitor there and easy to start a downtown errand there. A downtown with a handful of cafes like that is a downtown people choose, rather than one they simply drive through on the way to the parks.

None of that needs to be measured against any other shop in town. Downtown Visalia is better with every room that keeps the lights on at 7 am, and the Center Street flagship has been doing that since the summer of 2018.

Why the Planing Mill Room Belongs on Every Visalia Coffee Map

Visalia is a city of about 142,649 people on the latest American Community Survey five year estimate, the seat of Tulare County and the gateway for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Visit Visalia's own Coffee Trail page names sixteen stops across the city, and Component Coffee is one of them. For a drinker working through that trail, the Planing Mill cafe is the obvious downtown anchor: seven day hours, a full breakfast and a building with a story.

Put the pieces together and the story is simple to tell. Summer 2018. The historic Planing Mill. 513 E Center St. Coffee and breakfast every day, pastries made in house, a shop the company calls its test kitchen and its hometown staple, voted the Valley's favorite coffee shop, featured by the Times Delta within weeks of opening. The Fresno and Tulare locations came later, and each has its own page, but the flagship is still this cafe on Center Street.

Next time a morning in downtown Visalia calls for coffee and a place to sit, the Planing Mill is that place. Come for the building, stay for breakfast, and leave knowing a little more about the city you are standing in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Component Coffee's Visalia flagship, and when did it open?

Component Coffee's flagship is at 513 E Center St, Visalia 93292, in downtown Visalia. According to the company's own Visalia page, it opened in the summer of 2018 inside the historic Planing Mill building. The page calls it the company's flagship store and says it served as the test kitchen for everything the company has developed, which makes it the room where the menu first took shape.

What are the Component flagship's hours?

According to Component's Visalia page, the flagship at 513 E Center St is open every day from 7 am to 5 pm. The kitchen keeps shorter hours: 7 am to noon Monday through Thursday, and 7 am to 2 pm Friday through Sunday. That seven day schedule makes it one of the downtown stops you can count on for a Sunday morning, including before a drive to Sequoia.

What does the Visalia flagship serve?

The company's Visalia page says the flagship serves its full coffee menu and its full breakfast menu, along with pastries made in house. That makes the Planing Mill flagship a place for a full morning rather than a quick coffee counter. Breakfast follows the kitchen hours, which run until noon Monday through Thursday and until 2 pm Friday through Sunday, so weekend visitors get a longer window.

What is the Planing Mill?

The Planing Mill is a historic building in downtown Visalia that now houses Component Coffee's flagship at 513 E Center St. A planing mill is where rough lumber is dressed into finished boards, a working industrial building. The coffee flagship opened inside it in the summer of 2018, tying a modern cafe to a piece of the city's working past and giving downtown one more reason to park and walk.

What praise does Component's own page give the Visalia flagship?

Component's Visalia page says the flagship has quickly become a staple for its hometown community, voted the Valley's favorite coffee shop. The same page says the store served as the test kitchen for everything the company has developed since it opened in the summer of 2018. Both lines come from the company itself, on the page dedicated to the Center Street flagship in the Planing Mill.

Did local press cover the flagship's opening?

Yes. In August 2018, a few weeks after the summer opening, the Visalia Times Delta ran a feature on the new Component Coffee Lab and the big city flair it brought to downtown Visalia. For a room at 513 E Center St that had only just opened in the historic Planing Mill, a feature in the city's daily paper that quickly marked a strong start downtown.

Is Component's Fresno Tower District room part of Visalia?

No. According to the company's Fresno page, the Tower District location opened in January 2023 at 620 E Olive Ave, Fresno 93728. It belongs to Fresno, a city of more than half a million people with its own coffee scene. A Visalia drinker who wants Component should use the flagship at 513 E Center St, and a Fresno drinker should use the Olive Avenue address.

Is Component's Tulare Del Lago room part of Visalia?

No. Component's Tulare page gives the Del Lago location's address as 1096 Leland Ave, Tulare, CA 93274. Tulare is a separate city of about 70,000 people just south of Visalia. Each Component location belongs to the city it stands in, so the Visalia coffee map includes the Center Street flagship in the Planing Mill and leaves Leland Avenue to Tulare.

Does Component have a separate page for each city?

Yes. The company's site gives the Visalia flagship, the Fresno Tower District location and the Tulare Del Lago location each a page of its own, with its own address, hours and short story. The Visalia page covers the summer 2018 opening in the Planing Mill, the 513 E Center St address and the kitchen hours, so a Visalia reader gets the Visalia location rather than a blended company summary.

What else is near the Component flagship downtown?

The flagship at 513 E Center St is a few blocks east of Court Street, where Mission Coffee sits at 112 N Court St, open Monday through Saturday. The Visit Visalia visitor center at 112 E Main St is a short walk away. Downtown is compact enough that a visitor can cover both coffee shops and Main Street on foot in a single morning.

Work with Hillcane

Component Coffee's Visalia flagship opened in the summer of 2018 inside a historic mill built for dressing lumber, and it still serves breakfast there every day.

If your Visalia coffee shop has a founding story worth telling in full, reach Hillcane at hillcane.co/contact or call (256) 384-2449.