Locked & Loaded: Q&A with Blue Bottle's James Freeman on Pending Dolores Park Location

A latte to go from Blue Bottle Coffee

When San Francisco's Rec & Park approved a Blue Bottle coffee cart (or more properly, a trailer) it set off howls of protest in the Mission district. Opponents have questioned what kind of impact it will have on existing businesses and nearby roasters. There have been angry meetings, and even angrier blog comments. We spoke to Blue Bottle founder and co-owner James Freeman to find out what all the ruckus was about.

7x7: How long have plans for the park location been in the works?
At least a year. I heard about the request for proposal (RFP) around a year ago. It took a long time to fill it out, get the insurance, and that kind of thing. It was a fairly arduous process. I heard about the RFP last summer, and the due date was November. We spent the last few weeks before it was due in a little bit of a scramble. We heard back that we’d been accepted to the next round in January. Then we had a taste-off at a panel in Golden Gate Park, in the county fair building.

7x7: And what’s the current status?
We have a trailer, we have employees, and we’ve got a few little details we have to finish on the trailer, and then I have to see how it’s all shaping up.

There was a meeting on Thursday. It was pretty contentious, there were raised voices and profanity. Not all of them, I have to say. But scattered among the people who were not interested in the trailer, there were raised voices. It was a contentious meeting. I was thinking there were many places I would rather be than in this room of 416 people. My mother-in-law was there. She was visiting from Southern California, and she was like “oh, this will be so interesting to go to a meeting at city hall.” A few hours later I was like, “oh, you poor woman.”

7x7: How much have you already invested in opening the site?
Just in buying equipment, not counting hours of training, it’s a solid 25 grand, which is actually pretty cheap. We got a good deal on a trailer in Turlock that one of our guys found on Craigslist. We’re about to replace the espresso machine in it. We found a truck in Santa Cruz. We did a pretty good job of being frugal. We’ve got four staff, they’ve been through three rounds of training, so somewhere between 100-200 labor hours.

7x7: I saw you estimated that you’ll be paying Rec & Park 20,000-30,000 per year, and $12,000 at a minimum. How did you arrive at that, and can you explain the deal a little? I think most people might expect that you would pay a flat monthly rent.
The structure of the proposal is that there’s a $1000 minimum monthly rent, and then we’re on the hook for 10 percent of revenue. So if were to make 50 grand a month, which is optimistic but not audacious, that would be $5,000. I don’t remember exactly, but it was between 30 [thousand] on the low side and 50 on the optimistic side.

This is where it gets interesting. One of the reasons I was attracted to the RFP to begin with is that Rec & Park was restructuring how they treated their vendors. Prior to this RFP, the structure was a brutally high 20-25 percent of revenue. Rent should only be 6 percent or so of revenue. At 20 percent, everyone gets paid minimum wage and you end up with low quality ingredients. That’s why vendors in the park right now are the way they are. This new proposal was a realization that a smaller piece of a bigger pie will benefit Rec & Park more, and will be a better representation of the food scene of San Francisco.

That’s why I was attracted to it. With my labor and ingredient costs, it would be foolish to do something that’s 25 percent of revenues. I’d spend more than I was making. When it came down to ten percent, that was still on the high side, but manageable. It was less expensive than building out a cafe. I said: I can afford a higher rent than I unusually could, and it will be this pilot program. It will be something good with good ingredients. I was envisioning a lot of my colleagues from the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market world being interested. I was proud to bring similar standards to the Ferry Plaza standards to San Francisco city parks. I thought it was a good idea, and we would be a pilot.

I’ve been wrong about a lot of things before, but I don’t think I’ve been so wrong about mis-gauging what I thought was a charming and innocuous idea.

7x7: Let’s talk about that. Were you expecting any pushback from the community at all or did this come as a complete surprise? Have you ever had resistance to an opening in a new location before?
No. No. Our first two locations were in pee smelling alleyways. I remember after we’d been open on Linden a couple of years, this condo was for sale that said “steps from Blue Bottle Coffee,” and I was like, “hey, we’re an amenity now!”

7x7: Some of the resistance seems to be that you’re not perceived as local--your roaster is in Oakland, you have operations in Brooklyn and sell nationally via the Web. Is that a fair criticism? What do you say to convince people you are a local?
We have four leases in San Francisco. We pay a whole lot of taxes in San Francisco. I’ve been married in city hall. I live up the street from San Francisco. A less good-natured and optimistic person than I might be cynical about the primary engineers of the dispute--who all seem to be in the coffee business. It’s not a secret that we roast coffee in Oakland. You can call us an Oakland business, a San Francisco business, a Brooklyn business. But I love San Francisco. That’s why I live here. That’s why I never want to leave.

And I should say, I don’t love San Francisco any less because of this. It’s easy to get bogged down but I don’t get bogged down in this. It is a fact: we have multiple locations, not all in San Francisco, and if that means we’re not local, then... We’re something else.

Have you seen the petitions? There are these online petitions being circulated. When I looked at one, they mentioned McDonald’s prior to mentioning Blue Bottle. If that’s where the discussion is; I’m powerless to say anything about it.

I’m disheartened by a lot of the tone of the conversation. I’ve been hearing rumors of... Rumors of people wanting to sabotage our generator and flatten our tires. It’s really disheartening. We wanted to come in and change the way food is in the parks, and we thought Dolores Park would be a great candidate for this kind of project.

7x7: Some of the criticism has revolved around the trailer itself. Why just a trailer in the Mission? Why not invest in a full-on storefront in the nature of downtown or Brooklyn, for that matter?
It’s very easy to ascribe otherness. I was talking to a friend of mine from Japan. His English is serviceable, but he spent a lot of his professional life in Japan, and literally I could not explain to him what the problem is. I couldn’t make him understand where the dispute was lying.

We have several cafes. The whole point of this, the reason I opened in Brooklyn, is that I don’t want to have a million cafes in San Francisco, but I still wanted to do something interesting. What I really wanted to do, by the way, is open in the back of a Ford Transit Connect.

One of the decisions that I made in terms of selecting a park, a lot of it is about traffic density. It’s a tough business, to pay two hours of labor on either end without selling any coffee. It’s tough to make that work, so you need to sell a lot of drinks. Where is the largest concentration of people? We were thinking of Dolores Park from the beginning. Almost everyone submitting the RFP was zeroing in on Dolores Park because of the weather, the community and the density of the park. We have a lot of existing customers there, and when word got out, we got a lot of feedback from people saying they thought it would be great.

Even though there are a fair number of people who sell coffee in that neighborhood, that neighborhood is so robust, I firmly believe local businesses aren’t going to sell one less latte. we’ve seen that in Hayes Valley. Local business come in selling coffee, and we’ve watched our sales go up not down.

7x7: Have you been in touch with any of the other, more established businesses that border the park, such as Dolores Park Cafe?
We had a conversation with one of the owners at Dolores Park Church. We had a conversation after the first meeting. Our manager Mike Hamm talked to the gentleman that does Faye’s Video and Coffee. The conversations have been respectful.

7x7: Let’s move on to some of your more concrete plans. Can you tell me about what the trailer itself will look like and where it will be in the park?
One issue is the language. A pushcart was an unfortunate term, and unfortunately in the minds of people not used to dealing with the health department it conjured up images of the popsicle guy. My 8x12 trailer gets called a pushcart, which in the eyes of the health department it is. If people are expecting a pushcart, well... I have a certain sympathy when they weren’t expecting the scale.

If you’re going to follow the rules for mobile vending, you’re required to have certain things. [Freeman cites a laundry list of uninteresting health department requirements]. All of those things add up to a larger piece of equipment than people would really prefer.

It’s about the size of a horse trailer. It’s clad in shiny aluminum. It has two windows that flip up with an awning. The truck will not be parking in the park, just the trailer. It’s not an Airstream, it’s retro, but I think the time for Airstreams have come and gone.

7x7: What will it serve, when will it be open, and how many people will it employ?
We’ve got four full timers, and will fill in with existing staff and managers depending on how busy it is. We’ll serve coffee and espresso drinks. We’ve got baked foods. Espresso, macchiato, cappuccino, latte, brewed coffee, and New Orleans iced coffee. No sizes, no flavors.

7x7: Gibraltar?
If requested.

7x7: What can you tell me about the espresso machine, which I saw you described as red and jaunty? It sounds like something out of J-Crew...
It’s a three group lever machine powered by propane. It’s the same machine--we have a four group machine like that at our trailer at the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market. It’s propane powered, which is a more rustic form of operation but we’ve got a lot of experience with it.

There’s a small amount of electricity needed. But instead of a heating element inside the water, it’s almost like if you have a gas barbecue, a little pipe with flames coming out that are underneath the broiler. The lever doesn’t take any electricity at all. It’s a big spring that gets compressed and pushes through the pocket at the proper temperature.

7x7: Is it hard to keep the temperature correct?
It’s a bigger dead band. But the levers are kind of cool because it’s the original pressure profiling machine. You’ve heard of the Slayer, I’m sure. The lever is the original pressure profiling machine. The pressure goes up very quickly then tapers away in a bell shape curve that can be very good for the coffee.

I love levers. We have a La San Marco lever, a vintage one from the 70s, a one group lever, in Mint Plaza and a two group lever in our shop in Brooklyn. And that is the most expensive $200 espresso machine in the world--just because we spent so much money fixing it up. But then, oh, they’re really, really great.

Mat Honan writes about San Francisco coffee culture for 7x7 every Wednesday, except when he doesn't.

View the discussion thread.

Why do some of you commenters insist on making this issue out to be about coffee??

It's about COMMERCE, park space, and the reality of the lack of appropriate planning and notification by the Parks Dept.

It's also not about Dolores Park. They're now putting out a request for vendors for Lake Merced Park.

Something is indeed broken if we can't support taking care of our parks without renting out said space.

Our city spends MILLION$$$ keeping public and not-so-public golf courses perfectly manicured, but we can't keep basic neighborhood parks taken care of? That doesn't make sense.

Instead of poking fingers at the people who are taking up the cry, or poking at grammar, or the semantics of how that cry gets taken up -- take up the cry! Demand a better process!

I agree with chicken that a process that can't be stopped cannot be a good process. There's no emergency to get coffee, or food, into that park. It's time to step back and evaluate how this can be done better, not to kneejerk and force us into a contract/permit situation that doesn't fit the neightborhood's needs and desires.

By Nice fat old neighbor lady (not verified) on October 25, 2010

So, is it only non-residents who realize that Delores is a shithole to begin with? "Green space" my ass.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 22, 2010

So there has been lots of back and forth on this issue on blogs and it seems like there is something the media is totally getting wrong or omitting. Maybe that is because these are mainly foodie type blogs (that just for the record not every person living around Dolores Park reads) or it's easier to pin the merchants against each other because it makes for a juicy story or angle. But I wanted to state again that from the beginning I (who found out 7 days before the permitting process was to happen- which is not the proper amount of notice) have been bothered by the process conducted by RPD and have nothing personal against Blue Bottle or La Cocina. I have attended all the meetings and public hearings about this since the conflict started way back at the end of August, and since people like Alex Chaffee are calling for documents and such, here is a link to the minutes from the September 19th RP Commission Meeting. http://sfrecpark.org/documents/FileTree/Commission/Minutes/2010/091610%2...
I am assuming this is public record and you can read from the beginning that several organizations who are involved heavily with the park were not notified, a statement from Rachel of DPC asking, myself, Sam Mogannam of Bi-Rite Market, and Crystal who used to be on the Board of DPW (note that she was asked by a public official not to address the Commission). I will let you read it and form your own opinion.
It is unfortunate that James Freeman took the blog posts so serious and felt threatened, I am sure his trailer will be successful wherever it finds a home. He has proven he runs a great business. I do however hope that he can now see how all the mud-slinging, name calling(NIMBY), threats of boycotting, and accusations of crying "sour grapes" from his devoted Blue Bottle fans has possibly effected some of us in the Dolores Park Community.
I look forward to continuing the conversation and working towards coming up with creative solutions to raise money for our beloved parks.
Sorry this is so long-
Best
Michael McConnell, co-owner Fayes Video and Espresso Bar.

By CitizenK (not verified) on October 21, 2010

Nope. You're all wrong about Four Barrel. Especially you, "Chicken." Fitting name, I must say. Leave us out of this train-wreck. We most certainly are local and independent.

And for the record, I support anyone who has the nerve to risk everything on small business- that includes James Freeman of Blue Bottle.

By Jeremy Tooker (not verified) on October 20, 2010

It’s no accident that RecPark chose Blue Bottle – great coffee, great vibe, they treat their employees well. Of course they’re nothing like McDonald’s. But that’s not the point. The point is that public assets should be used for public purposes, not as profit centers. A non-profit that incubates local chefs serves a public purpose. A for-profit company doesn’t, no matter how socially responsible they are. If we allow a for-profit company to encroach on our park space for the sole purpose of raising revenue for RecPark, when do we stop? How much space is enough? How much revenue is enough? Where do we draw the line between companies we like and companies we don’t?
The profitization of public assets all over this city and country is a serious issue that deserves serious discussion. While Dolores Park is losing a few hundred square feet of public space, Candlestick State Park in Bayview lost 23 acres to condo development. Eminent domain court rulings across the country are allowing governments to force the sale of one persons’s private property to another for the “public purpose” of raising tax revenue – and in New York State, the courts can no longer say anything about it. Back on a local level, we’re talking about letting private clubs operate our public park clubhouses, which means they’ll no longer be available for free public use. This is a big decision, worthy of lengthy discussion and careful thought.
I personally think something is broken here, that the word “public” needs to mean something, and that borrowing money to provide basic services like fixing potholes and operating parks means our budget system is broken. But maybe I’m wrong. So let’s talk it through. And let’s do so before the next decision like this gets made. Let’s require City agencies to follow the same kind of notice provisions as someone who wants to change the shape of their windows or add a garage under their house.
Most of the discussion at Dolores Park Cafe should have happened before the Blue Bottle and La Cocina permits were granted, and it’s the City’s fault that it didn’t. We’re at the heart of all kinds of technical innovation – there are all kinds of ways to make sure everyone affected gets notified and that everyone gets their say before we make important decisions.
Public meetings are unwieldy and often unpleasant, but some of the best ideas come from the community. We’re the people who have to live with these decisions, after all. So let’s commit to true public process, and put this father-knows-best style of governance to rest.
Your friend from D10,
Kristine

By Me (not verified) on October 15, 2010

Mailisa, a counter response to your drama queen whining is "bashing"? Again, reality check please. Maybe time for a break from your bubble.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 15, 2010

Well we don't have men having babies with multiple women and not supporting then, we don't get our own strung out on drugs, we don't have a huge problem of robbing and killing our own, so I guess us honkies have nothing better to do then fight about coffee. And I prefer peckerwood or casper myself. LOL.

By SCUM (not verified) on October 14, 2010

lol. White people problems. A thousand honkeys protesting a coffee cart.

"The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."

Coffee carts...lol.

By Leroy (not verified) on October 14, 2010

DP is to small for any vending areas to be set up and the park is filthy already. Just imagine all the extra trash that will be blowing all over the park and into the neighborhood. If you want coffee or snacks bring them with you or get up off your ass and check out everything that you can get within two blocks in any direction,

By SCUM (not verified) on October 14, 2010

Chicken: I'd love to talk to you about this, actually. Would you email me at mhonan at gmail dot com and we can set something up?

And just so I understand: You're opposed to any and all vending in Dolores Park? Not just Blue Bottle and La Cocina? What about the vending in other parks?

By Mat Honan on October 14, 2010

All Im saying, bash me all you want because it seems that Blue Bottle fans are abusive and mean, at least on this blog. I want Dolores Park green. Period. I don't care if it's Blue Bottle or any other national company. I don't care if someone started out local. Blue Bottle can easily come to the neighborhood and open up a store like everyone else although they are two short blocks away already. I want my park to be green and free of commercialism as it has been for the 12 years I have lived across the street from it...Go ahead Anonymous=Blue Bottle employee, continue on with the bashing. You do such a good job of it.

By Mailisa (not verified) on October 14, 2010

Between selling space in the parks and issuing 2 AM weeknight table permits, it's clear that the City has sneakily drifted far to the right of residents in the neighborhood.

By Mission-Dolores Neighbors (not verified) on October 14, 2010

I guess Blue Bottle is the new Eucalyptus tree: non-native invasive species that must be eradicated! People, GET A LIFE. Start addressing some real problems for once.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 14, 2010

You'd think this was the proposed mosque at ground zero.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 14, 2010

Oh get over it Mailisa. If this is your idea of "shameful and gross" you need a reality/perspective check.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 14, 2010

While I am in agreement that our parks should not become food courts, it's a shame that Blue Bottle is bearing the brunt of the argument. They appear to be a well-run, smart, thoughtful business, oh and they happen to make fantastic coffee.

Regarding the question of whether or not they can be considered "local," are you serious? Am I wrong or do San Franciscans not want our best local business, business that we love, to be successful? Yes, I realize that there are larger issues at play re: Delores Park, but beyond that, shouldn't we support the ingenuity and smart growth of the city's best innovators? Doesn't that sound so much more like the San Francisco spirit?

Share the love people. In this case, share the coffee.

For the record, I'm a recovering Stumptown addict (thanks to BB Chiapas). I left Portland and returned to SF partly due to the intense "local" righteousness of the place. Don't get me wrong, I've been locally minded for as long as I can remember, but when a chef resorts to violence and breaks another chef's leg for using pork from outside a 30 mile radius, well, it's time to move on. I just hope that SF doesn't stoop to that level next. Oh wait, it sounds like that wish is a bit too late with the mention of all the threats above.

Perhaps it just the times we live in. If so, maybe it's time to reconsider redirecting that misspent energy toward something a bit more pressing, like the frightening state of the agricultural industry and our food systems at large. Or if coffee is really your passion how about this, push for a better commercially viable, environmentally responsible coffee cup. Why aren't people complaining about all those PLASTIC coffee lids littering land and sea? Instead of complaining, do something positive about it. Just a thought.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 14, 2010

Can you ask him to explain his relationship to the head of Rec and Parks? I think that Is partially why so many people are up in arms. Were other business in the Dolores Park region made aware of the RFP?

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 14, 2010

Blue Bottle does an excellent job and would be a wonderful complement to the area where I used to live. In case the naysayers haven't noticed, gourmet food carts (the antithesis of roach coaches) are all the rage right now. Brick and mortar businesses are prohibitively expensive and risky, this allows the vendors to focus on great products. One of the saddest things about San Francisco (city of brotherly love) is that there is bound to be vehement opposition to any new enterprise. From these reactions you would think it was going to be a strip club. I hate to think this might be other business owners reacting with this venom, I have always found it a plus to have other vibrant businesses nearby.

By former coffee worker (not verified) on October 14, 2010

"Here is a thought...if you don't like Blue Bottle, go somewhere else! "

I see. Go somewhere else. I think that when it comes to selling our parks to stores that you can't use the go somewhere else line. You use that line with brick and mortar.

I'm getting stuck. Did you really ask me to go to another park if I don't want to go to a park with stores in it? Because if this is my oppostion here, this is going to be really easy.

It's true that 4 Barrel was built with Stumptown money. Does that make 4 Barrel a chain store? Does it? So could Starbucks open a cafe on Valencia and 20th and call it Sharkbucks? Seriously, could that happen? Are there laws to protect us from this kind of thing? Do we need to be protected? Do we need legislation that would prevent RPD from steamrolling a community park into selling off spots to stores?

I'm sure that this would make excellent dialog. You can guess how I would think. But as for BB, it seems as if they wish to be the company that 'breaks' Dolores Park. Which is going to be messy. And uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. People are spitting mad. If it is true that they didn't see this comming, which I find impossible, then if I were them I'd run. There are going to be a thousand people there spitting on them on their opening day. Fucking riot cops. If it's true that they will IPO this year, that might be slightly bad for their brand. Slightly very much so.

It's really about reaching out. People just want to know that if something is out of control, there is a recourse. It's a due process thing. BB might be guiltless, and it's just RPD that's being sneaky. But since BB is the company that is going to profit (allegedly, not if we don't set up a coffee stand in front of theirs giving away coffee), they are bearing the brunt of anger.

And if you don't agree with me that RPD's process was deplorable, then you should be happy to know that although we will stop this, somehow, we will lose this battle eventually and our parks will become food courts and you'll complain about something else. But for now, you can complain about me. Because I'm going to figger out how to stop this. Because RPD is selling space in our parks to stores. Which 10 years ago would have been off the table. It's treason, I say.

Your mileage may vary. Why doesn't 7x7 magazine do some fair and balanced journalism and actually uncover some facts? Nah, why would they do that? It's all just fluff for advertising. You will make this about coffee, but really this is an arts issue. There are simply some things that must exist outside of commerce. And I do not trust that RPD has our best interests in mind. I also do not trust that any process that can't be stopped is a good idea. The opportunity for malfeasance is too great. I beleive that this selling of spots in our park was done in a sneaky, smarmy and gross way. I am appauled and outraged and so our thousands of other people. Thousands. Not like me and my 3 friends. We are hearing from thousands of people.

thank you for reading

By Chicken John (not verified) on October 14, 2010

It is one thing to fix up a neighborhood store with another coffee shop, it is another to trash a beautiful green park with a Blue Bottle horse trailer set up right beside a childrens playground. Shameful and gross. All of our green spaces are being eaten up by commercial entities.

By Mailisa (not verified) on October 14, 2010

Brandon's comment is accurate

It's incredibly ironic that the self styled 'progressives' really want nothing to change in this city, ever.

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 14, 2010

I used to think the term "bad neighbors" only applied to businesses trying to move in. San Francisco completely turns it around.

A few years back, my Glen Park neighborhood was assaulted by a gang of petty, Luddite thugs who wanted to prevent us from restoring a local neighborhood grocer -- to replace the one that burned down earlier and sat as a vacant lot for years afterwards. You'd think someone was wearing fur to a PETA meeting. Thankfully the idiots did not rule and we again have a good, local grocery.

If people want to live in Mayberry RFD where no businesses or services can ever survive, please move there and stop trying to put our lives through your perverted hell of utopia in a city shared with millions of others.

By brandon (not verified) on October 13, 2010

Only 1000 for rent? Cha ching!!!!!

By Anonymous (not verified) on October 13, 2010

I thinks its a shame that the businesses around Dolores Park that built up the community are being demonized and undermined by Rec and Parks and Blue Bottle while James Freeman gets tons of free press.
I guess it's all about who you know and smart politics. There are something like 6 articles in this magazine dedicated to Blue Bottle. Wow

By Mik (not verified) on October 13, 2010

Four Barrel was largely financed with startup capital from Stumptown Coffee - a chain with stores in Portland, Seattle and New York. Not everything is as "local" as it seems, and this is not a problem, people! It takes money to start a business. The opposition needs to do it's homework and stop being hysterical crybabies.

By Nothing Local (not verified) on October 13, 2010

This whole uproar about Blue Bottle @Dolores Park seems like a case of others being pissed off that they did not think of this first.
There are MANY coffee shops, roasters and companies through out San Francisco and at the end of the day it comes down to your personal preference.
Here is a thought...if you don't like Blue Bottle, go somewhere else! Mr. Freeman has created a successful business,he provides a high quality product, he pays taxes and has created job opportunities. I commend him.

By Carrie Keenan (not verified) on October 13, 2010