MENDOCINO CO., 4/21/26 — Long known for late nights and rowdy crowds, and more recently for the family-friendly Good Bones Kitchen, the Caspar Inn is beginning a new chapter as Caspar Bread and Wine — a bakery by morning and a wine and beer bar by night.
Owners and partners Connor Geraghty and Emma Katz opened the new business last month after moving to the Mendocino Coast in 2024, having fallen in love with the area during a road trip from San Francisco, where they previously lived and worked.
“One of the things we appreciate about the coast is that lots of the communities here are still very humancentric, and with Caspar, we found that to really be the case,” Geraghty said. “We were happy to just move anywhere up here, Caspar was coincidental, that’s just where we ended up. But after the fact, we realized that even though it lacks a little bit more of a physical structure of a town, there’s really a strong community here.”
Geraghty and Katz bring more than a decade of experience, each in their respective fields. Katz has worked in sourdough bakeries in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, focusing on whole grain breads made with heritage grains, while Geraghty has spent much of the past 15 years working in natural wine, including co-owning wine-focused establishments in San Francisco.
At Caspar Bread and Wine, the two have combined their skill sets into a space that shifts throughout the day: a bakery and cafe in the morning, and a wine and beer bar in the evening.
“Emma’s the baking half of the equation, and I’m the wine half,” Geraghty said. “We wanted to combine our two passions into something that felt close to what we know how to do, but also manageable.”
The business operates on a split schedule, open Thursday through Sunday with morning hours for coffee, bread and light fare, then reopening in the evening for wine, beer and small bites. The goal, Geraghty said, is to create a space that functions as both a casual daytime stop and a place to gather at night.
With licensing that allows minors on site, Geraghty said the goal is to remain family-friendly, more in line with Good Bones than with the Inn’s earlier reputation for rowdy nights. And of course, the new owners plan to keep the space as a music venue.
“The music will continue. A big thing that we wanted to make sure of was that we had continuity with the previous versions, even though what we’re doing is a little different,” Geraghty said.
The owners are planning for about one show a week that blends local musicians with occasional visiting artists. Geraghty said the events are being planned by music industry friends who also relocated from the Bay Area to the coast. Most events are expected to be all-ages, continuing the shift toward a space that can be used by everyone rather than a strictly night-focused bar scene.
On the food and drink side, both Geraghty and Katz prioritize local and regional sourcing. Geraghty said the goal is to build relationships with nearby farmers and producers, with offerings drawing from places like a new farmstand in Caspar and Wavelength Farms in Manchester, alongside beverages that include North Coast Brewing beer and kombucha from Fort Bragg-based Wilder, as well as local and regional wines from Mendocino, Humboldt and Sonoma counties. He said there will also be imported beer and wines.
Searching for grains
One of the most important pieces of getting the business off the ground was finding quality grain for the bakery. Geraghty said Katz is working with the Mendocino Grain Project, a company out of Willits that not only grows grain, but offers milling for local farmers – a significant service that is lacking in many regions.
“The infrastructure for small to medium-size artisan grown wheat is really kind of broken,” Geraghty said. “A lot of the flour from bigger and better-known bakeries, even when they’re after an artisan style, a lot of that flour gets put on a train to Oregon to be milled and sent back down. There’s hardly any small- to medium-sized mills around. It’s cool that they’re doing that really locally. That was a really big piece of the puzzle to fall into place.”
Geraghty said part of what drew him and Katz to the Mendocino Coast was its slower, more grounded pace, shaped as much by the natural landscape as by the people who live in it. In keeping with that approach, he said the two have chosen not to maintain personal social media accounts, opting instead to promote the business through more analog means, including fliers and a newsletter. Sign up for updates through the Caspar Bread and Wine website.
Caspar Bread and Wine is located at 14957 Caspar Rd. in Caspar and is open Thursday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.