Creamery is deal central for SF techies
Casey Newton
Updated 03:32 p.m., Monday, July 23, 2012
685 4th Street San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 896-1446
Not long ago, while waiting for Caltrain, Ashley Mayer stopped at the Creamery to do some work.
Inside the airy SoMa hangout, amid a throng of tech types tapping away on laptops, a scruffy young hipster approached and asked Mayer if she was single. In another place, the man might have been preparing to ask Mayer out on a date. In San Francisco, there are more pressing concerns.
"Hey," the man said. "How'd you like to beta-test my app?"
So it goes at the Creamery, where members of San Francisco's tech scene congregate and caffeinate in equal measure. The 4-year-old coffee shop at Fourth and Townsend streets is a regular stop for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, tech journalists and anyone else hoping to rub shoulders with the tech elite.
It has also become a destination for deal-making, a status cemented in February when venture capitalist Michael Arrington wrote on his blog that his firm, CrunchFund, "has probably closed ... more deals there than anywhere else."
The Creamery's rise illustrates how the city's technology boom is changing the neighborhoods where it concentrates, elevating small businesses into must-visit destinations and turning their owners into minor celebrities. It has joined Cafe Venetia in Palo Alto and Mountain View's Red Rock Coffee Co. in the pantheon of Silicon Valley coffee shops that have come to serve as external boardrooms for companies big and small.
"Everybody wants to be here," said Aarthi Ramamurthy, co-founder of lingerie sales startup True & Co., who stopped in at the Creamery recently for lunch.
Ramamurthy and her husband moved from Seattle to Silicon Valley to pursue jobs in technology. They found that even in Palo Alto, where they had settled, potential business partners kept suggesting they meet at the Creamery. Eventually, the couple moved to a new apartment in San Francisco just a few blocks away.
Maybe it's the location, between the commuting hub that is the Caltrain station, the people magnet that is AT&T Park, and the bustling startup scene that has sprung up around them. Patrons say they like the hip design, which carved a modern coffee shop out of a refrigerated room at the old Gilt-Edge Creamery, retaining the antique wooden beams and other hints of its industrial roots.
The menu pays obeisance to the city's demands for local, sustainably grown food; more than one patron has been lured in by the sign advertising the Ritual Roasters coffee served inside. Tech types appreciate the free Wi-Fi, and that management doesn't mind if you camp out for a while.
And lately, there has been an additional benefit to having coffee at the Creamery: You never know what you might overhear.
When Microsoft purchased the business social network Yammer last month for $1.2 billion, word got out not via corporate announcement or strategic leak but by a loose-lipped Yammer employee at the Creamery. Sarah Taylor, who works at recruiting firm Ignition Talent Group, overheard the employee discussing the acquisition and mentioned it on Twitter - a full 12 days before Microsoft confirmed it.
Arrington, who founded the influential blog TechCrunch before leaving it last year to start his venture firm, wrote that "if it's a slow afternoon in San Francisco, taking a walk to the Creamery will almost always result in something interesting happening."
Before he arrived here from Ireland, Ivor Bradley's friends gave him a piece of advice. In America, they said, you need good shoes and a good bed. If you're not in one, be in the other.
Bradley took the lesson to heart. He grew up one of 10 children in Galway, the son of a university professor, and after graduating with a hotel management degree, he moved to the East Coast to work for Ritz-Carlton. In 1996, he came to San Francisco, where he spent the next decade working in hotels and restaurants.
He also got to know San Francisco's close-knit Irish community, and in time was introduced to fellow Irishman Robert Mellett, who had purchased the Gilt-Edge property and hoped to build a restaurant there. Mellett designed the new space, and Bradley assumed responsibility for its operations. It opened on Valentine's Day 2008.
At first, the clientele was mostly Caltrain commuters and Giants fans who wandered over from the ballpark, as Mellett and Bradley expected. But over the next two years, the SoMa neighborhood transformed into the center of San Francisco's revitalized startup scene - and the Creamery's clientele transformed along with it.
"About 2010, you could see a change in the community here," said Bradley, a soft-spoken man with kind eyes and a gentle lilt in his voice. Bradley, who turns 42 on Monday, began to notice that he was receiving catering calls from companies he had never heard of: Yammer, EventBrite, Ngmoco.
That SoMa had become a tech hub caught him by surprise, he said, because unlike most of his customers, he tried not to eavesdrop on their conversations.
"To be honest, I didn't know," he said, taking a few minutes off from busing tables and chatting with customers. "We try to make sure there's privacy if people want a meeting. There's lots of little business meetings that we kind of turn off our ears to."
But eventually, the sea change became clear through the sheer volume of catering inquiries.
Businesses that requested breakfast for 10 one month were calling back six months later asking if he could do lunch for 50. Heartened by their initial success, the partners built an adjoining taqueria, the Iron Cactus.
Why a taco shop? Bradley points out that there is an Irish flag at the Alamo, and "if the Irish can go to the Alamo, an Irishman can open up a taqueria in SoMa."
Sales have increased every month for the past two years, Bradley said. And when people want to have meetings out of earshot these days, they slip into the Iron Cactus, which in the mornings has become a kind of private meeting room for the tech world.
"A Netflix for dogs - that was the pitch," said Sriram Krishnan, Ramamurthy's husband, who recently left a job at Yahoo.
Like many people who stop regularly at the Creamery, he has made a kind of sport out of overhearing entrepreneur's discussions with investors at the coffee shop, and considering how they might work. "Netflix for dogs" has been the most memorable to date - even if it was unclear whether the idea was to rent movies to dogs, dogs to people, or some combination of the two.
Lest anyone criticize the eavesdroppers too much, it's worth noting that many patrons seem to be talking loudly on purpose, to attract attention to themselves.
"You just hear these conversations all the time - 'We are the new Instagram!' " Krishnan said. "You think, that's ridiculous."
But a meeting at the Creamery can pay off. Ryan Mickle learned of its value recently while trying to raise funds for his startup, Yardsale, which makes an iPhone app for buying and selling things with friends and neighbors. For months he had been e-mailing a prominent angel investor asking for a meeting without getting any response.
Then Mickle learned the man often spent time on weekends at the Creamery. Mickle sent another e-mail asking if he might stop by for coffee on Sunday. Ten minutes later, he heard back from the investor - sure, came the response. Come on down.
The meeting, Mickle hints, went well.
Bradley is keen to build a business that can last beyond the current business cycle. He has worked to cultivate his ties to the neighborhood, offering the space's back patio at no charge and encouraging companies and individuals to host events there. On Sunday, the Creamery is serving breakfast to 200 or so people taking part in the AIDS Walk in Golden Gate Park.
That means more work and longer days, but Bradley says he prefers it to his old career running hotels and restaurants. His countrymen's advice has served him well, he said - he sleeps hard, he works hard. And he waits to see what will happen next with his fellow entrepreneurs, gathered at the Creamery's old wooden tables, conjuring visions of the future on their high-resolution screens.
"It's such an exciting country," he said. "You've gotta get in there."
Casey Newton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cnewton@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @CaseyNewton
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