Having recently marked the 13th anniversary of Olive Cafe in Mission Beach, owner Sarah Mattinson recalled how it was starting out.
\n“There was one full-time employee, one part-time employee \u2013 and me,” she said, noting there have been more than 100 employees since. “I didn\u2019t have a lot of employees in the beginning because we were building the business.”
\nOn May 12, Olive Cafe held a 13th-anniversary bash, providing free coffee and cookies in a birthday-like atmosphere.
\n“We had a lot of people, and a lot of older employees, come out for it,” said Mattinson.
\nA lot has changed in the intervening years. The restaurant at 805 Santa Clara Place has more than doubled in size, and the business has branched out into a nearby bakery and part-time ice cream shop.
\nA transplant from upstate New York, Mattinson\u2019s family wasn\u2019t in the restaurant business. Her father was a mail carrier and later postmaster, but their family lived adjacent to a deli.
\n“I just loved how [the deli] was part of the community and everyone would meet there,” said Mattinson.
\nAfter moving to San Diego, Mattinson got a scholarship to attend University of San Diego, where she majored in business, with an emphasis on purchasing and procurement.
\n“One of the best classes I took was negotiations, along with women in management courses, and that has definitely helped me,” she said, noting of her business, despite the long hours and stress, “It\u2019s my baby that I\u2019ve watched grow. Being here every day really paid off in building the local clientele.”
\nDescribing her 2 1\/2-year-old bakery as “a labor of love,” Mattinson said she now supplies about a dozen other local restaurants, mostly in Mission and Pacific beaches. “I love knowing where my bread and ingredients come from,” she said.
\nOlive Cafe serves breakfast and lunch all day. The breakfast menu includes a host of scrambles, pancakes, and bowls. The lunch menu features a wide assortment of quesadillas, burritos, wraps, salads, sandwiches and desserts.
\nIn a past life, Olive Cafe was two, single-family homes. Said Mattinson, “Someone in south Mission said their grandparents lived here 25 years in a one-room house.”
\nThe dwelling-turned-cafe now sports a fireplace and a truly warm, homespun ambiance.
\nMattinson feels fortunate to be centrally located in Mission Beach. “We\u2019re really lucky because we have a parking lot nearby and bike racks,” she said.
\nMattinson makes a point of being civically active. “I try to be a big part of the community, I\u2019m involved in the women\u2019s club, and town council,” she said. “I want to see our town do good things. And you\u2019ve got to be a part of it to make that happen.”
\nOlive Cafe\u2019s owner also likes her client mix, which changes seasonally, tripling or better during the summer peak.
\nThough Mission Beach doesn\u2019t have nearly as many businesses as its neighbors in PB and OB, Mattinson noted, “We all sort of stick together and we all work on projects together, and I was really welcomed when I came in \u2026 so I try to do that with the new businesses coming in helping them get through the (slower) winter months.”\u00a0
\nConcerning the secret to her business longevity, the restaurateur noted, “You gotta be a chipmunk. You\u2019ve got to hoard it from the summer to make it through the winter. It took me a good couple years to learn that.” Olive Cafe Where: 805 Santa Clara Place. Hours:?Mondays through Thursdays 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Info:?858-291-8222, olivecafe.biz.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having recently marked the 13th anniversary of Olive Cafe in Mission Beach, owner Sarah Mattinson recalled how it was starting out. “There was one full-time employee, one part-time employee \u2013 and me,” she said, noting there have been more than 100 employees since. “I didn\u2019t have a lot of employees in the beginning because we […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":278693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Olive Cafe celebrates 13 years of feeding Mission Beach","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}