When Ritual Coffee Roastersโ founder Eileen Hassi opened her flagship coffee shop on Valencia Street in San Francisco, in 2005, specialty coffee wasnโt really a thing yet. People still ardently defended Peetโs Coffee & Tea as the Bay Areaโs best coffee, Blue Bottle Coffeeย amounted to just a handful of farmer market stalls and a kiosk, and the majority of the cityโs specialty coffee heavyweights were distant bubbles floating across the collective coffee brain. โWe were fighting with people to try our coffee,โ Hassi says, โwe had to be talking about how we were different from the norm because aside from, like, Peetโs, we were alone in the coffee scene.โ
Almost a decade later, San Francisco has, to put it modestly, changed. Today, the City by the Bay is one of the worldโs premier specialty coffee destinations, a breeding ground for exceptional roasters and cafes, a mecca for coffee enthusiasts, and a petri dish for new ideas and concepts in the specialty coffee world. And as San Francisco has expanded and evolved, so has Ritual. On Tuesday, April 26, Ritual opened their newest cafe, their sixth location, and the first to open since 2011, on a stretch of Haight Street Hassi has taken to calling โCentral Haight,โ across from the sloping grass of Buena Vista Park. Along with the new cafe, Hassi and Ritual will introduce the first rebrand of their iconic logo since the shop first opened. And though Ritual has never stopped progressing and tweaking and adapting, the new cafe and the new branding represent a new, somewhat different approach to spreading their passionate belief in the joys of spreading specialty coffee to the masses.
โThe coffee culture in San Francisco and in the United States is so different now,โ Hassi says, and if Ritual was an upstart punk trying to tear down the norms of commodity coffee in 2007, now, well, itโs a foundational part of the booming American specialty coffee industry. โWhen we opened,โ Hassi says, โwe were acting like kids, testing our boundaries and, well, we donโt have to do that anymore.โ It starts with the new cafe. Ritualโs flagship store on Valencia (which went through an extensive remodel in 2015) was built as an altar to specialty coffee, a place, as the companyโs name implies, for devotees of good coffee to come and worship. โPeople walk into our Valencia shop, and are like, โwhat is this?โโ Hassi says, โEverything about Haight Street is more humble, no one is going to walk into the Haight Street store and not know exactly what it is.โ
Which is to say the Haight Street store, designed by Envelope A + D, is a more traditional-feeling neighborhood cafe, one with huge light-filled windows that look out onto the park, beaming succulents, platters of croissants and other pastries, and a convivial atmosphere that draws people in. โIโm very picky about location,โ Hassi says โand ultimately I chose this spot because it feels like a place I want to drink coffee in the morning. This cafe is easy to sit in and feel like youโre going to have a good day because you started it off on the right foot.โ Hassi worked with her architect to โmake it feel like youโre in the park,โ lining the tops of the walls with huge mirrors that reflect the bright green of Buena Vista into the cafe. The mirrors are also a nod to the European cafes of the 1930s, as Hassi says, โThis is a spot that looks back on its history not forward to whatโs next, so it felt right to reference cafes of the past.โ
Itโs been almost five years since Hassi and her team opened their location in the Hayes Valley Proxy Project, a renovated storage container in a parking lot, and both Hassi and the company havenโt been sitting idle. Hassi herself has gotten married and had a kid (โI took five years to have a personal lifeโ), then remodeled the Valencia store, but sheโs also dedicated herself to improving the infrastructure of the company. โWe needed to figure out all the things that made this place a great place to work,โ she says, โwe needed our people to feel secure in their jobs and knowing what those jobs were before we could take another step.โ Beyond that, Hassi believes in opening her stores organically, when it feels right. โI really want to have the people to do the project before I decide to take on the project,โ she says, โIf I have to look for people from the outside itโs probably not worth it because itโll invariably change the culture.โ
A change that can be seen, somewhat in the companyโs subtle shift in their branding. If Haight Streetโs white walls and soft light are the quieter, more recognizable balance to the high ceilings and harsher angles of Valencia Street, then the new design, by Good Stuff Partners (with assistance from designer Emily Craig), โI realized that our branding didnโt reflect us anymore.โ Though the iconic star and cup Ritual is recognized by isnโt going anywhere, the almost militant-feeling red, black, and white of the original design have been softened, and paired with an organic-looking white and gold honeycomb pattern (which adorns the front of the new storeโs three-group Synesso Hydra MVP espresso machine).
โFor the first few years,โ Hassi says, โ[the original design] felt like usโaggressive. I mean one of our famous things was a frequent buyer card that said, โYouโre an asshole without coffee.โโ The new design features a more welcoming font, one that still pops from the front of their bags (now made entirely with compostable material), but is more spaced out, and doesnโt have the fist-shaking verve of the former. Itโs a friendlier, almost more trusting design, for a company that now has a vast and very trusting customer base, a company that doesnโt need to change the state of coffee, because, well, itโs already done that.
A new font and a new neighborhood cafe doesnโt imply that Ritual has changed though, as Hassi says, โI think itโs easy to look at us and say, โTheyโre getting old.โ But itโs more nuanced than that.โ Ritual hasnโt lost its edge, itโs just found a modicum of comfort in a San Francisco scene they helped to created. โOur customers trust us now,โ Hassi says, โWeโre in this whole blossoming scene in San Francisco that people know about worldwide and wanted to do something more approachable because, well, we donโt have to yell anymore.โ
Noah Sandersย (@sandersnoah) is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in San Francisco, and a contributor to SF Weekly, Side One Track One, andย The Bold Italic. Read moreย Noah Sanders on Sprudge.