Eileen Rinaldi of Ritual Coffee Roasters

In today’s episode, we sit down with Eileen Rinaldi, founder and CEO of Ritual Coffee Roasters, to celebrate two decades as one of San Francisco’s most influential coffee institutions. From its beginnings on Valencia Street in the Mission District to becoming a national tastemaker with outposts at SFO and a standout canned coffee line, she shares the journey that began with a dream in a Swiss café and grew into the business it is today.

Forever Neighbor host and Dolores Deluxes owner Ramzi Budayr explores the challenges of scaling with integrity, the power of community-driven growth, and what it truly means to be a good neighbor — in business and beyond.

Guests

• Ramzi Budayr, Dolores Deluxe owner and host of the Forever Neighbor podcast
• Eileen Rinaldi of Ritual Coffee Roasters

About Forever Neighbor

Forever Neighbor is the official podcast of Dolores Deluxe. Owner Ramzi Budayr interviews small business owners, creatives, and activists as they explore what it means to be in community with one another. In this special four-episode mini-season, Budayr interviews five local business owners in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Transcript

Ramzi Budayr: Picture this. You’re a small business owner. You just pulled a hundred hours this week. You wake up to the sound of school children across the street from your house. I literally live across the street from Dolores Deluxe at 22nd and Dolores, and there’s an elementary school there. Roll out of bed, bleary-eyed, go outside. You make the turn on 22nd Street, you walk a couple blocks, you make a left on Valencia, and there it is, the red awning, the flag ritual coffee beckons, and your day can finally begin. Hi, I’m Ramzi, and you’re listening to the Forever Neighbor Podcast this season brought to you by Square.

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eileen Rinaldi, the CEO, and founder of Ritual Coffee, which is celebrating as of this month, their 20th anniversary. If you can’t talk about coffee in San Francisco without bringing up Ritual, I mean Eileen and her team pioneered a style that has now informed countless really, really impactful and instrumental businesses, and it all started on Valencia Street. And so we really got to dive into her journey and all the different places that she was able to take the brand, including these incredible canned coffees that we sell at Dolores Deluxe, and then more recently, an outlet at SFO at the airport. And what’s really striking to me is how Eileen has been able to balance scale with accessibility and really representing the city that took her in, and that made her brand such a success. So congratulations again to the entire team at Ritual, and I’m going to hand it off to Eileen. 

Eileen Rinaldi: My name is Eileen Rinaldi and I own Ritual Coffee. We’re based in San Francisco, and we are celebrating 20 years next month.

Ramzi Budayr: Oh, what a great time for us to be sitting down and chatting. That’s so cool. Congratulations. Alright, let’s go back. I would assume 21 years ago? 22 years ago? Was it longer before that that you really wanted to start ritual? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Oh, that’s a great question. My dream to start Ritual started in 1997. I was living in Switzerland, actually. And that’s where I first fell in love with cafe culture because I was living there in a tiny room that was really far away from where I was going to school. And I found this cafe that was like, I spent more time there than I did in my home because it was right near the campus, and it was the kind of place you could go in the morning for coffee. I would go there after school to do my homework. I can go there at night to have drinks with friends, and it was just like the quintessential third place. So that’s where the dream for rituals started. And then my first job in coffee was in Washington DC at a place called Politics and Prose. It’s a bookstore with a cafe, and I was managing the cafe. As soon as I started doing it, I was like, this is it. Six weeks in, I called my parents and I was like, I figured it out. I know what I’m going to do with my life. Whoa. You know what I fell in love with was that when you work in coffee, you get to be part of people’s days and you’re always giving them good news. 

You hand over a cup coffee and it’s like whatever your day holds, this is going to make it better. But behind it is a very challenging math problem. Which is that most people walk around and they’re like, oh, five bucks for a cup of coffee, whatever. And it’s like eight bucks for a cup of coffee now. And they think, oh, coffee shops are making money hand over fist. That is not the case. Most coffee shops lose money. And I just got hooked on how can I make this thing not lose money? So from there, I moved to Seattle, and that’s where I got into the craft of coffee itself, because at that time, the Northwest, specifically Seattle and Portland and Vancouver, all had a way better coffee culture than anywhere else in the country. Even Missoula, Montana had better coffee. 

Ramzi Budayr:
Interesting. 

Eileen Rinaldi:
In the year 2000, and then San Francisco did. So yeah, when I finally moved here in 2003, 

Ramzi Budayr: Did you move here with the purpose of? Like as soon as I get here, I’m going to start the process of opening something, or was it like, I’m going to go work somewhere first.

Eileen Rinaldi: Well, I had to work somewhere. 

Ramzi Budayr: Okay. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Because of reality. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, sure. 

Eileen Rinaldi: But my friend picked me up and I was like, okay, take me to Valencia Street. That’s where I’m going to open my cafe. I had kind of narrowed down what I was looking for and where we are. It was one of the building I had decided, I mean, at that point I had decided I was going to roast coffee. So I was looking for a one story building so I could easily put the roaster in and vent it out. And I really liked the light on my side of the street. So I went into all the one story – there were only three one story buildings on our side of the street. And I had these conversations. One of ’em was cut loose, which is still going strong. One was 1026 Valencia, and the woman owned, it was a fancy furniture store and Home Goods, $26 tea towels kind of a store. And I was like, Hey, if you want to leave, call me. And she was like, get on my, and then a week later she called me and was like, actually, things did change and I need to home. 

Ramzi Budayr: Wow

Eileen Rinaldi: I need somebody to take over my lease. And it took a while for us to figure out a deal, and I just feel so grateful because it’s been a wonderful home for 20 years.

Ramzi Budayr: Incredible. So how did you actually do that? Did you have money saved? Did you have investors? Was this a loan situation? And that’s just personally on my end. I’m curious. 

Eileen Rinaldi: No, that’s a great question. I had a friend who opened a business, so it took two years from when I moved here to actually find the spot, sign the lease and get the money and all of that. But an instrumental part of it was I had a friend who was opening a business and he was like, you’ve always known that you wanted to open your own business. What are you waiting for? And I was like, I don’t have any money. And he said, I’ll you some money so you can get started. So he loaned me some money, and thenI called some uncles, aunts, family members…

Ramzi Budayr: Scrap some stuff 

Eileen Rinaldi: Together, scrap it all together, and that’s how we got started. 

Ramzi Budayr: Wow. What was staffing at the beginning? What was your team? What was your support? 

Eileen Rinaldi: There were four of us. So I worked managing a coffee shop in the financial district while I was getting ritual together. And there was somebody there that I worked with really well, and she was like, well, hypothetically, if you open your own coffee shop, I would hypothetically come work for you. And so she was my first employee. So there were four of us, and we were open from seven in the morning until 11 at night. So the math did not match how that was going to work out. But basically as soon as we opened, people came out of the woodwork, people who are really excited about being a part of bringing good coffee to Francisco very quickly. We went from four people to eight people, and then I was hiring people over the counter. I would be on the espresso machine pulling shots, and somebody was like, I want to know about working here. And I was like, what’s your experience? 

Ramzi Budayr: And so things were busy enough that you could, or were you just using at the runway? 

Eileen Rinaldi: No, no. We opened on a Thursday. By Saturday there was a line to the corner. And then, wow, we were just so slammed that Memorial Day. I totally spaced that it was a holiday, which was, I was like the first holiday after we opened. So there were two of us in the cafe, and there was a line out the door. I mean, this was in the before times. Square did not exist. So we had a system from memorizing the order of drinks. So we would put all the same cups on top of the bar and then we would just memorize what the drinks were. It was probably that day that we were like, all right, we’re going to have to write the cups or something. And I just remember every time I would give somebody a drink that day, I was like, thank you so much for waiting. And the response so often was like, thank you for creating something worth waiting for. 

Ramzi Budayr: Oh, that’s so wonderful. 

Eileen Rinaldi: There for it. And it was like half people from Seattle and Portland who were, thank God there’s good coffee in San Francisco. I don’t know why it took so lot. And it was half people who would look at the latte art and be like, how did you do that? People would just never have been exposed to Greek coffee. 

Ramzi Budayr: It was so fun. Cool. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Well, Ritual Valencia was the first brick and mortar that is serving the style of coffee that San Francisco’s known in the only other people doing it when we opened was the Blue Bottle in Hayes Valley that was late. And we were dear friends with those baristas, and people would send, when we opened, they were telling their customers and people would be like, work is there anywhere else I can get? And we would send them to his out. Wow. And there was this beautiful camaraderie, Steve Ford, who was one of the original Blue Bottle kiosk baristas, would bring over a six pack at clothes and we would nerd out what a filter basket guys is at talk. And he’s still in coffee, and we’re still friends, and we still nerd out over the intricacies of coffee stuff. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, that’s so great. You immediately knew your tribe, it sounds. So walk me through the period in the first location and then the growth that led to the need for a second location. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Okay, well, wait, I skipped one important event, which was I was like, oh, I wanted to open a cafe, and then I decided to open a roasting. 

Ramzi Budayr: Oh, right, right. Yeah.

Eileen Rinaldi: It’s a big step. So when I first moved to San Francisco, my dream was to open a cafe, and then I didn’t find anyone roasting coffee in the style that I had gotten used to in Seattle. So I was like, well, people up there roast, I guess I’m just going to have to learn how to roast, which that’s the kind of decision you can only make when you’re 20. 

It’s just like, well, other people do it, I’ll figure it out. And in making that leap, I made my business much bigger because then all of a sudden it’s not just I’m serving my customers. It’s like I’m sourcing coffee and I’m melding relationships with people all over the world who grow the coffee we sell, which has been amazing and one of the most deeply fulfilling parts of this career path and effect. So that was just a big leap to make. And when we first opened, we had not yet found a roasting machine because roasting machines are kind of like old cars. I think people just keep them in their garage until they find somebody who’s they deem worthy of owning it. So we opened using Stumptown coffee from Portland. We were their first wholesale account outside of the Portland area, and they did it. They were like, this is an experiment. We’ll do it temporarily until you get on your feet roasting. And so six months in, they were like, okay, experiment time’s over. It’s time for you to roast. And they lent us a roasting machine. 

Ramzi Budayr: Oh, wow. 

Eileen Rinaldi: And they said they would teach us how to roast, but they actually just said, make sure you put your hair in a ponytail. You don’t want to get stuck on the machine in not being taught how to roast by anyone. We kind of accidentally pioneered our own style. And I’m just so grateful that no one showed us how to do it. We just roasted and tasted and roasted and tasted and roasted and tasted. There was a time that my dear friends who have been with me from before I opened Ritual and are still with me, they lovingly refer to as my vegetable soup phase of coffee roasting, but I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was under roasting it a little bit. We thought that was an interesting flavor. The technique has been refined. 

Ramzi Budayr: But that’s the process. And to your point, what a gift to be able to actually feel through the process without any bias. That actually resonates a lot for me in my journey because obviously I’ve worked in restaurants and worked with food and stuff. I don’t eat sandwiches at home. I was never really a sandwich person before doing this. So the first two months of sandwich construction food was good. The ingredients, the components were good, but they were built really weird. They were really messy. And in some ways actually that has informed a kind of more kinetic, visceral, messy style that I’ve come to. But it runs counter to the rules of what a normal sandwich should be. So that totally resonates for me. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Yeah. I, and when we’ve hired people to, most of the people who have roasted at Ritual over the years are people who started at Ritual either in production or as baristas, and we taught them how to roast. Every once in a while we’ve hired somebody from another great coffee company and we teach them our way of roasting. And I’ve had people be like, this is insane. No one else is doing this. You are creating a method that is ridiculously laboring. And we’re like, yeah, we know we’re so crop. And the difference, it’s like people argue, well, who can taste the difference? And that’s who we’re roasting for is we’re roasting for the people who can taste the incremental difference between our coffee and all of the other coffee companies out there who I love and respect and are doing great things in their own way. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah. It’s funny. I think a lot of the time people can’t quite pinpoint why it is they love something, but it doesn’t matter. It’s often that little extra. 

Eileen Rinaldi: I am trying to teach that all the time that lots of small businesses are going to do things to 80%. And if you go to 90 or a hundred percent, you’re going to get way more customer because people, they might not even be able to articulate what it is, but they’re going to walk in and be like, oh, this space is still real. There’s something going on here. And I like it that figure it out. I like it. 

Ramzi Budayr: And then for all the other entrepreneurs that know how hard it is, they’re the ones that are like, I can’t believe you went that far. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Right 

Ramzi Budayr: Exactly. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah. So you said you moved the roastery to Soma. Was that your first sort of new space acquisition? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Well, we opened our second cafe on our second anniversary, so May of 2007, we opened a tiny little coffee bar inside Flora Grub Gardens in the Bayview. So Flora Grub started on Guerrero. Just so blocks away from here. And when they wanted to expand, they found a much bigger home in the debut. And because Flora and saw the owners we were friends from before I started Ritual, and they were like, wait, we can’t move our business and not have good coffee. You need to come. And I also recognized that, I mean, flora is an incredible visionary and that whatever she was creating and wanted to be a part of it. So I was like, yeah, there’ll be a little coffee bar open there. And that was a very powerful lesson because we had giant lines out the door at Valencia, and I was like, well, if just a few of these people come to our little coffee bar in the Bayview, we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. And it was funny because even the cab drivers whose lot was on the same street in the Bayview would drive to Valencia and park in the middle of the street and come and wait in a giant line and come to Valencia, and I could not get them to come into the place where they were with no line.

Ramzi Budayr: What was the lesson there? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Location, location, location.

Ramzi Budayr: But I’m just in awe of the timeline for your expansion. It’s incredible. 

Eileen Rinaldi: So yeah, we opened our second location on our second anniversary, and then we went to Napa and opened our third location on our third anniversary, which that was a big shift. I brought it to my team. I was like, Hey, we were just asked to go into this gray market up in Napa, what do you think? And my employees were like, I had the manager of Valencia Street. She was like, yes, let’s do it. I am not a city person. I’m going to be moving out to Napa or somewhere like that anyway. And I was like, okay, great. So you’ll move there and you’ll run it. And she was like, 100%. I was like, I’m not doing this you do because I can’t run it. And she was like, no, I got it. And so she and two other key employees moved to Napa. Wow. And 17 years later have a really strong employee culture at Napa. That’s very much like virtual Valencia as in the early days, none of those three original people are still there, but they passed it on, who been passed on. 

Ramzi Budayr: They were the starter, the starter calls, right. Yeah. One thing I want to get to in the context of Square is what kind of software you’re using and how you actually use Square to manage multiple locations. 

Eileen Rinaldi: So I was just at the coffee conference with some of my team and we were all staying in an Airbnb together. It was like 11 o’clock, we’d been out at the conference all day and then parties and he flopped on the couch. And the first thing I did was I was like, ‘Oh, Hayes Valley had a really good day today.’ And my coworkers were like, ‘Is this how you relax?’ I was like, yes. So I have to say, pulling up the app and checking, being able to have all my cafes in one spot and look at trends. We had a day recently where we sold more sick bevs, the specialty drinks, than we did lattes or cappuccinos. And I was like, whoa, that’s a burst. When we released new merch, I’m on there. How many t-shirts did we sell? Do people like it? So I love that, and I love being able to compare to this day last week or this day last year. 

Ramzi Budayr: So at this point, how many locations do you have? 

Eileen Rinaldi: We have four. 

Ramzi Budayr: Okay. 

Eileen Rinaldi: So we have Valencia, Hayes Valley, Napa, and SFO (San Francisco International Airport). 

Ramzi Budayr: Okay. I want to talk about SFO. You did such an amazing job with the space, likewise for the packaging on your can coffees. I think the branding is both from a CPG perspective makes so much sense. It’s really eye catching, it stands out, but it’s also really true to San Francisco. 

Eileen Rinaldi: The artist lives in the neighborhood. 

Ramzi Budayr: So let’s talk about that first maybe. What was the process of working with that artist? What was the brief? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Okay, so for the packaging, we went back to the folks good stuff, design. Who, they’re the people who created our logo 20 years ago. And I still work with Amy, who’s the brilliant mind behind our logo. So when we wanted to do a cam, I went back to her and she was like, you’re a San Francisco company. What if each can represented a different neighborhood in San Francisco? I love that idea because it just in such an amazing way of celebrating what makes San Francisco, San Francisco, it’s our neighborhood. We started with the neighborhoods where we have a SP strong presence. So Valencia, his valley, and Soma. And we had an idea for the artists for the style of art that we wanted, but the example of the artist they brought to me was an artist from the Netherlands. And I was like, no, no, we need to find someone in San Francisco. And so fortunately, one of the former art director ritual works at CCA, and I wrote to him, and I was like doing cans. I want an artist who has this kind of a 1960s graphic style. And he was like, here are three, but I think the person on the list is what you’re looking for. And it was G who lives in the mission. So it was just meant to be.  

Ramzi Budayr: No brainer. 

Eileen Rinaldi: It was such a fun process because we were trying to think about, okay, the mission, how do we represent the mission on a can in a way that if you’ve been here as a tourist, you’ll recognize some things, but if you live at 19th and Valencia, you’ll see stuff that you and only a hundred other people will get. And so we have on there, we have the Bell tower from Mission High, but we also have an octopus, which is a shout out to 826 Valencia. We have the little troll window. We have these little Easter eggs that you’d really have to know the mission well. And Soma was cool. So each of the cans has a different bird that represents it. So we put the Paris because on Dolores to see the Parrots. So it was really fun to think about the different cans. And the Soma can of course has a drag queen of front and center, and we have the Filipino sun on there, so of the Filipino cultural district. And it just felt, and it’s so fun when you share the can. I was working Stern Grove last summer and somebody was like, damnit, is this the Filipino sun? And they were like, that’s my culture. What is it doing on your can? And they were really excited being on there and stuff. It’s so fun. 

Ramzi Budayr: So it’s such a great visual representation of how you actually conduct your business too. Kudos on that. Yeah. And so how does that extend to the SFO deal? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Well, it’s funny, it actually kind of helps me see my own growth as entrepreneur because. In 2007, 2008 SFO was like any other airport where it had all the generic chain stores and bad fried food, whatever. And Gavin Newsom was the one who was like, no no, SFO needs to represent San Francisco. We need to have global, organic, sustainable food. And so most operating in an airport is complicated because you’re dealing with security. There’s just a whole nother set of rules to operating in an airport that there’s a learning curve. And so all these people were coming to Valencia men in suits, the southern accents coming from Dallas and coming from Atlanta. And they were like, we’re opening at SFO. We mean you. It’s got to be local, organic, sustainable. And I was like, oh, well, we’re not organic. And I don’t even think these people knew what those words meant yes sir.

And they were like, so it was funny. They were like, yeah, we’re just going to take our business model and your brand and we’re going to put it at SFO. And I was just like, no, I don’t think you know what it means to operate in this way. And at the time, I just couldn’t fathom how we could do the volume that an airport does without compromising quality. And so at the time, I was just like, we were French pressing all of our coffee at that time. We hadn’t even moved on to batch brewers. So I was like, I just can’t even fathom how we could do that. And so I just said no to all these people. Then somebody else approached me, somebody, a local business owner who owns places in the airport, and it was years later, and it was for one of the more recent terminals to be done. And he was like, let’s put in a proposal. And even then my answer was, I will help you do a wholesale account and it’ll be serving ritual. And if that goes well, we could talk about putting a proposal it so that there’s a place called Valencia Street Station. It’s in the international terminal. And so that was our first wholesale account at SFO. 

Got it. And that built the partnership that then once I knew how they were operating and said, they are very aligned and of values. They treat their employees really well. They know how to do good quality food. They were willing to invest in high quality equipment and invest in the training. Then we did the SFO location, that’s called Ritual to goer. And it was very collaborative because the folks who are doing the project obviously know how to operate in an airport. And there’s a whole different set of building codes, things there are built to such a high standard. But I was involved in that process to make sure that it looked and felt just like a ritual accounting. 

Ramzi Budayr:
So did the artists, the local artists here, do the mural over there? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Theme artist? 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah. Yeah, the visual identity is striking. It’s really 

Eileen Rinaldi: Cool. And I just really wanted people when they walked in there to know, you’re already in San Francisco. 

Ramzi Budayr: So with all this growth, where are you going next? 

Eileen Rinaldi: Such a good question. The thing that I am really thinking about is the future of coffee, which really relates to how we buy coffee. Coffee is kind of in a crisis, and it has been for a really long time where coffee farmers are underpaid, and most coffee farmers are aging out of owning their farms. And so now the next generation who’s watched their parents struggle has grown up in poverty or hungry, it’s going to be their turn to decide what to do with the family farm. And we need to start changing what that looks like. We need help people see a future in coffee. And what we see is the farms get sold to the resorts, they get sold to Americans to retire, and that’s really bleak. So I really have been thinking about how do we, San Francisco is such a powerful city in so many ways. 

We’re powerful because we drive culture here. And so how do we use that power to make sure that farmers in Honduras, Costa Rica, Columbia, are wanting to continue to grow amazing copy and be rewarded for it. So just continuing to think about how do we tell these stories in a way that resonates with people and see where does this go, where they can feel the difference between buying my coffee and whatever else at the grocery store. When I think about growth, what drives growth is I want to create new opportunities for my awesome employees to grow and to new roles. And I also want to buy more coffee because the more coffee we buy, the way we buy it, the bigger impact we can have. For sure. 

Ramzi Budayr: In the context of this economic, political landscape and tariffs and everything, do you feel, I mean, obviously everyone’s feeling squeezed, but do you feel that the coffee industry is particularly exposed or about the same as everybody? 

Eileen Rinaldi: I mean, it feels really exposed. The tariffs are such a yo-yo for people. And what I will say is what we’ve been hearing from the people we work with is that because we already pay really high prices, people we work with are experiencing less instability than other coffee farmers. But yeah, it’s a terrible tank for the market industry. There’s actually was a really amazing podcast called Cheap Coffee that kind of details how coffee right now is the cheapest it’s ever is. Coffee used to be a luxury item that was reserved for people of a certain status. And I love that coffee is accessible, but at the same time, it takes a lot of cuus saber to produce a coffee, not just our labor preparing it, of roasting it or going back to picking coffee is done by hand. We need to be paying those humans. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, the means actually matter, right? We all care about the end, but the means actually do matter. So speaking of community, I’m curious how you would define yours. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Oh, that’s a fun question. So for us, I think about community, so many different community. When I think back to 21 years ago when I was writing the business plan for Ritual, it was like, and it will be a place that builds community. And I remember sitting there and feeling like a fraud and being like, how does one build community? What does that even mean? But then once we opened our doors, I just saw it, people like neighbors talking to one another. I mean, at our store in the Bayview, I watched this amazing interaction. This was at Flora Grubb, and these two women were there and they were chatting in line as people did in the four times. And somebody was like, oh, how did you find this cafe? And she was like, well, I live on this block. And the other one of them was like, no, you don’t. I live on the, and these two women would on the same for over a decade, I’ve never seen each other. 

Ramzi Budayr: That’s crazy. 

Eileen Rinaldi: And then we built a cafe and all of a sudden they get to chat and figure out what they do and how they can help each other and how they can be neighbor. So the first layer I think about is the community of the people who come into our shop. And the thing I love about coffee is it’s everyone. It’s old, it’s young, it’s locals, it’s rich, it’s poor, it’s literally everybody together. But I also think about community in terms of the people we buy from. So we have community all over the world. We have community in Central and South America, we community in East Africa. And thinking about how what we do here can be supporting people. Sure, 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah. They’re all interconnected. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That’s a great answer. We close every episode with two neighbor related questions. So the first, is there a neighbor at any point in your life, whether residential, commercial, San Francisco, wherever you’ve lived that’s really made an impact on you? And if so, feel free to give them a shout out.

Eileen Rinaldi: Well, when you ask about a neighbor that had an impact, there’s such a clear person to cut. Guy, the flower guy guy, the flower guy has a flower business on the sidewalk between 15th and Noe in Duboce Triangle. And she is the consummate neighbor, has a kind word for everyone who passes if you need to know what’s happening in the neighborhood. I was like, what’s the story with that guy? He was like, okay…

Ramzi Budayr: Here’s the tea. 

Eileen Rinaldi: Not in a gossipy way, just in a really compassionate understanding, the human nature of everyone around you of a way. And he would connect people. He’s the snap dresser. My son is six, we moved away from that neighborhood two and a half years ago, and he was like, mama, you know what I miss from our old neighborhood, thought he was going to. And he was like, I miss Guy, the flower guy. And so I swung next time I was in the neighborhood, I swung by and told Guy that story and he sent home a little bunch to lifts, but he’s the best. 

Ramzi Budayr: I guess the big closer. And you kind of touched on it a little bit in terms of the value system, that guy, the flower guy embodies. What does being a good neighbor mean to you? 

Eileen Rinaldi: To me, being a good neighbor means showing up. And sometimes when something’s going on, you’re like, oh, what does showing up mean? In this case, I don’t know if you’re a bruns in the hospital, show up, pick up some food, go visit them, show up. Or with a neighbor being a good neighbor in the context of small business, it’s like somebody’s doing a promotion, throwing a party. Figure out how you, me and my tribute, how you can boost what they’re doing. Or another shout out to an amazing neighbor is Kristen, who owns The Booksmith in the Haight. One of my neighbors on Haight Street had a fire and she called me and was like, do you have their number? I need to make sure they have these resources. And just reaching out and making sure that after something big happens, that there are resources. But a lot of people dunno how to access those. Making sure people are calling the city and being like, Hey, I need help. That stuff is out there. But a lot of people don’t know about it. 

Ramzi Budayr: And especially when people are going through crisis, sometimes they feel like personally under-resourced. So that’s to be able to help

Eileen Rinaldi: Help to give them the phone number of the plate to call instead of starting at Google. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, I love that. And I certainly hope it works out for us so we can stay more than just the leaser we we’ll see out. 

Eileen Rinaldi: I have so many questions for you. 

Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, happy to talk about us better. Cool. Are you hungry? Thank you. Yeah. And that was Eileen Rinaldi, founder of Ritual Coffee and Pioneer in San Francisco and American Coffee culture. It was really, really inspiring to talk to her and feel the correlation between someone’s passion and someone’s success really inspires me to double down on what I’m passionate about. So thanks again to Eileen. Congratulations to her and the whole team. I’m so excited to see what the next 20 years of Ritual will do for our community. If you want to support Ritual, you can find them at Ritual Coffee on Instagram, or you can visit their original location at 1026 Valencia or any of their locations, maybe on your way out of San Francisco at the airport in Terminal one. And if you want to support Dolores Deluxe, visit us at Dolores Deluxe SF on Instagram, doloresdeluxe.com, and in person at 3500 22nd Street at the corner of 22nd and Dolores. We’re open 7:30 to 7:00. And yeah, thanks for listening and we’ll see you next Tuesday.