Family feud, lawsuit roil North Beach’s Caffe Trieste

A family feud that has racked the popular Caffe Trieste in North Beach for more than a decade has escalated with a lawsuit by the late founder’s son, seeking to shut down the company that runs the 61-year-old coffeehouse.

Fabio Giotta, former chief executive of the managing company and now a minority shareholder, claims in his San Francisco Superior Court lawsuit that his sister-in-law and niece have defrauded him out of any say in the business’ management.

“The formerly congenial workings of the Giotta family business have been replaced with rancor and distrust,” Giotta said in the suit. “It is no longer possible for the current shareholders to work amicably toward a mutually beneficial goal.”

More than a decade ago, Giotta was the one being sued — by Adrienne Giotta, his brother’s widow, after Giotta and his sister removed her from the board of directors. A settlement of that suit allowed Adrienne Giotta to keep her 40 percent share of corporate stock and her management role.

Around the same time, according to published reports, Fabio Giotta fired his niece, Ida Zoubi, as manager of the cafe — a decision that was promptly reversed by his father, Giovanni “Papa Gianni” Giotta.

Giovanni Giotta, an Italian immigrant, opened the cafe at Grant Avenue and Vallejo Street in 1956, the first espresso bar on the West Coast, the family says.

Luminaries of the Beat Generation soon flocked there, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. A photo on a gold wall above the jukebox shows Francis Ford Coppola typing the screenplay for “The Godfather” at the cafe.

It also became a place to go for Saturday afternoon concerts, featuring Giovanni Giotta, who had studied opera as a young man in Italy. He was joined by his sons: Fabio, who sang and played accordion, and older son Gianfranco, a semiprofessional singer and Adrienne Giotta’s husband.

The family later opened other cafes in Berkeley, Oakland, Sausalito and Monterey.

Giovanni Giotta died in January 2016 at age 96. In the months before his death, according to Fabio Giotta’s June 22 lawsuit, Zoubi and Adrienne Giotta colluded to remove the elder Giotta as chairman and elevated themselves and two other family members to the board. They also falsely claimed that Fabio Giotta had approved rules changes that slashed his own powers as company president, the suit said.

The two women used their newfound powers in April to elect Zoubi president of the managing company in place of Fabio Giotta, leaving him as president of a subsidiary firm that markets the cafe’s coffee and “has struggled with low sales and diminishing cash reserves,” the suit said.

They also took away his company car and his access to company bank accounts, the suit said.

Giotta “is a minority shareholder with a hostile board of directors that continues to limit his authority and reverse his managerial decisions,” the suit said.

Giotta seeks dissolution of the company — under laws allowing courts to terminate a corporation because of fraud, mismanagement, abuse of authority or unfairness to shareholders — and damages for his financial losses.

He isn’t necessarily seeking to close the cafe, his lawyer, John Scarpino, said Wednesday.

“We hope to find a way to work with other shareholders and directors and make the corporation more functional,” Scarpino said. He said discussions so far have been “amicable,” but if they fail, Caffe Trieste could be sold to a current shareholder or someone else, or shut down completely.

Carl Lippenberger, Adrienne Giotta’s lawyer, declined to comment on the suit. Zoubi could not be reached for comment.