New shop, old space
Owners of Tuolumne’s Revive Coffee opening second site in Sonora Despite the challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Tuolumne residents Dan and Sophia Rowe believe downtown Sonora is ready for a “coffee revival.”
The Sonora branch of their Tuolumne coffee shop, Revive Coffee, opens Friday for take-out orders only in the former Eighty One Bakery and Coffee Co. storefront at 81 S. Washington St., which shuttered during the pandemic.
“We’re just excited to continue to make space for people, no matter the way things are now,” said Sophia Rowe, 30. “We’re excited to be doing that through the vessel of coffee. That’s what we’ve been doing in Tuolumne, and that’s what we want to do here.”
The Rowes purchased Revive Cafe in April 2019 from the former owners, who founded it in 2012. In deference to the original title, they changed the name to Revive Coffee and set out to imprint their own brand of sustainably sourced brews and craft meals in Tuolumne, a town often beset with a languishing storefront infrastructure in its downtown district.
They said Sonora presents its own challenges, but like Tuolumne, it’s also ripe for transformation as restaurants struggle to persist with rules about capacity, social distancing and hygiene.
“One of the major reasons we wanted to have a shop in the first place was to have a creative space and support the community in a way they could connect in a way that means something to them,” said Dan Rowe, 38.
After Eighty One Bakery and Coffee Co. announced its permanent closure during the pandemic shutdown, customers in Tuolumne urged the Rowes to take it over.
The couple were undecided, but then Dan Rowe, an avid fisherman, picked up flies from Sonora Fly Co. and sat on a bench across the street from Eighty One to marvel at the space. From there, he could see the wide, well-lit windows on either
side of the door. Emblazoned on individual panes on the transom window above, C-OF-F-E-E was spelled out in block letters.
They decided, “why would we say we can’t?” and approached the building owner in September about a lease, Sophia Rowe said,
The bones were already there, she said, so there wasn’t much work to be done inside besides a few cosmetic updates.
“They did such a beautiful build out here,” she said. “It’s built for a coffee shop.”
When the Sonora location opens on Friday, they will utilize the curbside pickup spots in downtown designated by the city for local businesses for the service.
The expansion comes at a time of great universal uncertainty about business sustainability, but the Rowes said they were motivated by the ongoing success of their Tuolumne location during the pandemic.
The original location is positioned between Summerville High School, Summerville Elementary School and Mother Lode Christian School, fostering both a youthful and professional clientele.
Sophia Rowe credited the ongoing success of their Tuolumne location to online and app-based ordering systems for curbside, take-out orders, even when they had to close their doors to the public. They began with online orders, but debuted the app just after the statewide stay-at-home order in March.
“If you don’t adjust or pivot, you won’t succeed,” she said. “It was the catalyst to continue to have sales. Our shop there in Tuolumne has just been steadily growing busier. A lot of coffeehouses tend to be a community hub spot.”
They will offer the same online services at the Sonora location.
“We’re hoping to do that still, even though everything is always changing,” she said.
They believe they will have the added benefit of foot and vehicle traffic in Sonora, while also expanding access to customers for a wide range of take-home products such as mugs, single-serve coffee packages and roasted beans.
They said they seek to avoid the cliche pretensions that are typically associated with coffee shops and offer customers an experience that is not purely transactional.
“There’s so much depth to coffee that connects people on a global level,” Sophia Rowe said. “We love to bring people on the full journey.”
The menu in Sonora will be the same that’s served in Tuolumne, “simple and concise” choices for breakfast and lunch including sandwiches, burritos, toasts and baked goods.
Among their more popular items are the Rice Krispies Treats and the speciality grilled cheese “toastie” with gouda cheese from Oakdale, balsamic caramelized red onions, organic bartlett pears and local sourdough.
Among their coffee options right now are beans from Costa Rica, Zambia and their Basecamp house blend from Guatemala and Mexico.
“A lot of the time we look for a coffee, just like with a craft beer, you get these nuances and these flavors,” Sophia Rowe said. “It’s as fresh as we can get it.”
Sophia Rowe said she was born and raised in Tuolumne County, while Dan Rowe is originally from Angels Camp. It was a longstanding dream for the couple to own their own business from almost a decade before they purchased Revive.
Daniel Rowe was previously employed with Cal Fire and the couple lived in Arnold, but he plotted a career change to education in 2011. After receiving his teaching credential, they moved to Woodland, where he worked at Woodland Christian High. Later, he joined the administrative staff.
Their friends owned a business called Journey Coffee Co., and he began working there on the weekends. When they expanded, he managed their Fairfield shop. Later, they bought into a mobile coffee cart selling Journey Coffee at Crossfit events, small business events and even the Wild West Festival in Angels Camp.
The couple initially staked out Angels Camp as the site of their coffee business. There were options there, but nothing ever came to fruition. They heard through mutual friends that the original owners of Revive Cafe in Tuolumne were willing to sell their business.
“It wasn’t what we necessarily set out for, but it was all there,” Dan Rowe said. “It was like push and play. We gave it some life, cleaned some things up and it was a ready deal.”
Dan Rowe’s experience in the coffee industry goes back almost a decade to his time with Journey. As a modern coffee shop owner, he said, management can be as academic and philosophical as it is business-oriented.
“Craft, or specialty coffee, that was the first time I spent a lot of time working closely like that third-wave coffee movement,” Dan Rowe said.
The third-wave coffee movement is characterized by the ethics and sourcing of coffee as a cash crop commodity, with business owners having more direct, global access to growers than ever before. It follows the first wave, or the commercialization of coffee after World War II, and the early days of coffee in corporate enterprises like Starbucks and Peets, Dan Rowe said.
About every three months, they go to Oakland and pick up 100 pound bags of coffee from a distributor. Dan Rowe roasts the “green beans” in small batches in Tuolumne before they’re prepared for coffee.
Dan Rowe said it costs approximately four to five dollars for a pound of unroasted coffee, which makes about 16 to 18 individual cups. The actual price to customers, he noted, includes the cost of labor, serving vessels and incurred cost of the facilities.
“This is beyond fair trade, more like appropriate trade,” he said. “We’ve experienced a lot of excitement and a lot of feedback. We’re not necessarily getting rich off this. Our goal is to be profitable for sure, but we want to reinvest with that industry.”