7 JUN 2020 My name is Jessica Furui. I moved to San Francisco in 2004 from Oakland, and I am originally from Redlands, California. In 2019, I opened my dream cafe supported by my industry colleague and now business partner, Ray Lee, of Akiko's Restaurant. We opened in the heart of North Beach as a kissaten-inspired Japanese cafe offering casual food items like chicken katsu, homemade curry and udon noodles. Our food is fresh, organic, substantial and accessible for people of all incomes. Our main mission is to enrich lives and create community.

We closed our cafe in accordance with California’s shelter-in-place ordinance beginning March 17th after being open for just six months. With a new business there is a tendency to over work, so the chef and I used this opportunity to take a rest.

After six weeks, we reopened on May 5th with limited hours and days. The reception was really great. It was, and has been, wonderful to be able to be a part of our community’s lives again.

Due to longer waits and price gouging happening with groceries, we decided to offer bulk pantry essentials from our kitchen. We are selling things like eggs, milk, olive oil, rice, flour, sugar. I’ve also been working directly with farmers to source our eggs and with ranchers to source coastal pastured beef. During this pandemic, I immediately became more attuned with how vital our local networks are.

To be honest, my nephew, who is my roommate and godson, and I did a lot of drinking! Late night garden hangs listening to music and talking, dancing, I taught him the fundamentals of cooking. We had a great time. I did a bit of yoga here and there. I had grand visions of studying my Japanese, doing more yoga, exercising more, etc. But it didn’t pan out that way and I had to give myself some slack and be okay with what I was doing.

I had a strange feeling of surrender coupled with a deep sense of gravity in relation to this worldwide pandemic that just brought humanity to its knees. I had to give myself room to relax, enjoy my time and not judge myself. I’ve been enjoying doing zoom happy hours with groups of friends and my family. One of the positives I’ve gained from this is a closer connection with others as well as a deeper empathy for people and their struggles.

Lately, I’ve been inspired by our local North Beach community. There are some really great non-profit organizations that have been doing amazing work for local business. North Beach Neighbors is a great example of folks creating tangible change for the better. I’ve been most surprised by how quickly others also understood the importance of one another’s presence in our lives. United we stand, divided we fall.

I’m looking forward to getting back on track, sales-wise, for my little business. I was given this opportunity to create something and I did create it. And people feel the love and are inspired by it. I am looking forward to sharing more with people. Sharing music, laughter, tears, conversation, love, food, drink, hugs.

We would love for you to shop with us! We have our full offering of menu items and bulk pantry goods on an online store you can find on our website. You can support us by telling your friends about us and sharing our information. We also send out a monthly-ish newsletter and you can sign up for that on the website, too. Thank you so much for your consideration.