Family-owned since 1991
Our Story
Where it all began — and why it's still the same family behind the counter.
Family-owned since 1991
Where it all began — and why it's still the same family behind the counter.
Behind the counter"You wanna what?"
Gregg and I have been happily married for a really, really long time. We moved here in 1991 when we wanted a more diverse place for our daughters, Skye and MeeMee, to grow and learn. Gregg had a good friend named Steve, a wonderful Polish man we called Steve-O, who owned a cigar store in Huntington Beach — something we'd never really gotten into, at that point.
A year after hanging out and learning a bit about it, Gregg came home and said he wanted to open a cigar store. My response was, "You wanna what?" But when I saw the look in his eyes, I just knew we were going to open one. So we started looking for a location.
He kept going back to the corner where the shop is now, but wouldn't commit — two young daughters, a wife, a house, all the things that come with it. Then one day we drove past it and I saw that look again. And that was that.
— The Engels Family
A few good decades
The family moves to Oceanside, looking for somewhere by the water to raise two daughters.
Gregg's grandfather Ed gave him the push. A friend's cigar store gave him the spark.
The doors open on Coast Highway — the same corner the shop calls home to this day.
Thirty-plus years on, the regulars feel like family and the door's always open.
People walk in for a cigar and leave with somewhere to belong.
That was always the point. The cigars are excellent — but the reason people keep coming back is the chair, the conversation, and the welcome.
