Category: News

El Pípila, a family-owned operation led by chef-owner Guadalupe Guerrero and her daughters, Brenda and Alejandra, received an award for Outstanding Restaurant Design.

El Pípila’s win is a change of pace considering the last two San Francisco restaurants to top the category were Michelin-starred fine-dining establishments

San Francisco’s dazzling Mexican restaurant El Pípila and the popular cocktail bastion Bar Agricole were among the stars of Monday’s James Beard Foundation awards ceremony in Chicago, an event the culinary world likens to the Oscars.

Ruth Jordan imagined walking away from the business would be easy. Most of her adult life had been spent operating San Francisco’s oldest black-owned bar, Sam Jordan’s in the Bayview. But lately, with sales seeming to slow down, the work felt like it was coming to an end.

“We’re at this critical point where we have to be more proactive in helping these black-owned businesses by actually going to them,” said Marcus Tartt of the Bayview’s Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center. He has worked with the Jordan family in the past and was surprised to see the property for sale.

Jordan said there are still decisions to be made concerning the bar’s future and how to keep it alive moving forward, but for now, she’s content with taking it off the market. “I now see all of these people who support me, support the bar,” she said. “I thought I was finished, I really did. I guess I’m not.”

What if we didn’t need plastic bottles and toxic ingredients to take care of our hair and skin? This is the premise behind Samudra Skin & Sea, a wild seaweed skincare brand that also cares for the ocean. In this episode we talk with Shilpi Chhotray, an advocate turned entrepreneur who has built Samudra into a thriving, regenerative small business.

Shilpi is a friendly force of nature, and in this episode she shares about the pleasures and challenges of running a values-driven business, about how she leverages the Samudra brand to minimize harm from consumer products and raise awareness on bigger global issues like ocean and plastic pollution, and how she balances it all with her day job.

Somewhere along the line, women, in their infinite wisdom, decided it was OK for them to wear sneakers with everything, including dresses. As travelers, we are delighted to leave our kicks on instead of having to kick them off, no matter what outfit we’re wearing.

The eco-friendly Bendy is part-sneaker, part-flat, fully-perfect! The cushioned footbed is the same as those found in high-performance running shoes. Clearly, you need these to wander sprawling Cairo for days on end without your feet even so much as uttering one complaint.

Rica Sunga-Kwan started her ice cream operation Churn Urban Creamery two years ago in the Outer Sunset, the neighborhood where she grew up. But after trekking her ice cream cart across the city for popups and deliveries to show off flavors made with ingredients from her garden, Sunga-Kwan has found a permanent space for Churn in the Portola District, an area appropriately known as San Francisco’s Garden District in honor of its rich agricultural history.

Churn makes about 10 base flavors, many of them — like rosemary olive oil, lemon thyme, and fresh mint chip stracciatella — with ingredients from Sunga-Kwan’s garden plot, Beach Cottage Urban Farm, in the Outer Sunset.

Amid a rash of food business closures, one San Francisco neighborhood butcher shop has been saved from the brink of demise by an out-of-the-blue, angel investor, but the owner says small-business survival shouldn’t have to rely on such miracles.

Last month, Avedano’s Holly Park Market announced it would permanently close June 30 because of stiff competition from tech companies, uncertainty from the sale of its building and challenges in staffing.

The small-business owner said she now has a silent partner who just wants her to continue supporting small farmers and butchering whole animals for the foreseeable future.

Based in San Francisco, Heidi Gibson’s American Grilled Cheese Kitchen has grilled up a national following that’s boosted by her popular cookbook.

Being this cheesy isn’t easy. There’s little downtime when you’re a new mom, senior director of product management at GoDaddy, a recipe tester for America’s Test Kitchen, as well as a mentor in the small business community and a first-time franchisor with big dreams—but Gibson remains a happy juggler.

Further down the line, Gibson dreams of reaching 50 locations—just 47 more to go—as the inflection point where life gets easier as they move beyond bootstrapping into a place where franchise infrastructure begins to take the lead. In this fantastical future with busywork off her plate, Gibson wants to keep giving back to the “little ecosystem” of small business owners she frequents and maybe, just maybe, dust off that business plan for a biscuit-based concept she wrote years ago.

“Carter started her culinary career selling plates at her uncle’s church. Encouraged by success, she decided to go to culinary school to learn both the cooking techniques and the business aspects of the food world. She attended Le Cordon Bleu and in 2017, her Creole food business was born. She called it Boug Cali.”

“Since its inception, Carter has held pop-ups in other restaurant spaces and most recently became one of the inaugural food vendors at the Warriors’ new Chase Center. In early 2020, she will be one of the featured restaurants in La Cocina’s forthcoming Tenderloin food hall.”

“On her menu you’ll find an assortment of po’boys, gumbo and burritos, all with Creole touches, an intentional decision to pay homage to both her family’s roots throughout the South and her own upbringing in California.”