The Merchants of Butchertown

How the spirit of a bygone meatpacking powerhouse lives on in the makers and small businesses of San Francisco’s Bayview.

The Bayview, one of San Francisco’s oldest communities, sits at the sunny southeastern edge of the city. Bakeries, breweries, and other small businesses are scattered along the Third Street commercial corridor, where Muni’s T-Line rumbles by. More than a century ago, cowboys and cattle roamed these streets, when the Bayview was called Butchertown, a testament to its slaughterhouses and packing plants, which once supplied meat to the region. The largest meatpacking district west of Chicago’s stockyards, Butchertown was home to hard-working immigrants and their families, a scrappy but well-fed community. “Our people, however poor,” wrote a resident in 1879, “eat their juicy, sweet, and healthful meals of meat three times a day.”

Like bygone Butchertown, the Bayview leads the city in ethnic and economic diversity. Its African American population, San Francisco’s largest (together with Hunter’s Point), goes back to World War II, when the US Army recruited thousands of workers to the booming naval shipyard at Hunter’s Point. After the war, cuts in defense spending brought layoffs and unemployment to the Bayview, while residents endured housing discrimination and neglect by City Hall. But a tradition of community activism was born. With last year’s reopening of a newly renovated Opera House­­ — thanks to tireless community efforts — what’s old is new again. In the Bayview’s small businesses, industries, and dedication to feeding the city, the spirit of Butchertown lives on.

Like bygone Butchertown, the Bayview leads the city in ethnic and economic diversity.

Today, a community group of local businesses calls itself “Merchants of Butchertown.” Chaired by Barbara Gratta of Gratta Wines, it includes EDOT (Economic Development on Third) and most of the makers featured here. Each month, the group meets to trade advice, co-marketing, and local news. Last weekend, Merchants of Butchertown and EDOT threw their first — hopefully of many — makers pop-ups at Gratta Cellars for a neighborhood tasting and more.

Sequoia Sake

Craft production has taken the country by storm, but the number of domestic breweries making sake, Japan’s traditional rice wine, still hovers around a dozen. Since 2015, the Bayview has been home to San Francisco’s first and only artisan sake brewery. The creation of husband-and-wife team Noriko Kamei and Jake Myrick, Sequoia specializes in Nama (live and unpasteurized sake). Just four ingredients — water, yeast, rice, and koji (the mold behind soy sauce and miso) — are used in their meticulous production process. Sequoia sits on San Francisco’s last contiguous manufacturing block, a visible link between the Bayview’s past and future.

Bayview Pasta

In the heyday of Butchertown, when Third Street bustled with tanneries and sausage makers, working-class Italians called the neighborhood home. Butchertown was “a landscape of labor,” writes historian David Igler, describing the neighborhood’s meat industry and its hierarchy of jobs: Fertilizer preparers, lard producers, livestock-minders, cattle splitters, offal pullers, and “hog men.” Meat and pasta were standard fare for Butchertown’s Italian workers and their families. Today, Josh Felciano, the sole owner-operator of Bayview Pasta, is bringing fresh Italian noodles back to the neighborhood. Before settling into a commercial kitchen on Barneveld Avenue, Felciano plied his trade at Piccino and Delfina, two San Francisco restaurants known for perfect plates of pasta. Felciano sources organic wheatberries from American farms, milling his grains by hand to retain nutrients that are stripped by conventional methods.

Yvonne’s Southern Sweets

Lifelong San Francisco resident Yvonne Hines draws inspiration from her grandmother’s baking. Last November marked 10 years since she opened her storefront at Third and Shafter and started doing a brisk business in pies, pralines, and butter cookies that have a cult following. After winning a contract to bake snacks for last year’s San Francisco Superbowl, her sweets gained a national platform. But Hines is a local fixture who’s reaped awards for her community involvement and business success. “One of the greatest things about moving to the Bayview is Yvonne’s Southern Sweets,” says a visitor between bites of peach cobbler. LISC, the national nonprofit that works on affordable housing and community development, praises Yvonne’s Southern Sweets as a model small business that has “helped bring new life to a disinvested community in San Francisco.”

Gratta Wines

“The Bayview, then and now, has the most homeownership in the city,” says Barbara Gratta, who moved to the neighborhood in 1999. “People stay. They know each other and there’s a strong community. There’s generations out here.” Gratta’s eponymous, fully-licensed garage-winery was possible because of the community, she explains, and the Board of Supervisors, which granted her permits to make wine in a residential space that wasn’t zoned for commercial use. Since 2015, Gratta Wines has offered a tasting room in Butchertown Gourmet. “The Bayview feels like old San Francisco,” says Gratta. “I moved to San Francisco in the early 90s, and things have changed over the years. But in the Bayview, the changes are slow in coming compared to the rest of the city. There’s a thoughtfulness in the community about proposed development,” she adds. “People want to maintain this sense of collaboration and small business activation.” Gratta produces a few hundred cases a year with sustainably grown grapes from Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley. Her bonded garage winery is probably the first and only in San Francisco. But Gratta Wines is sustaining the neighborhood’s do-it-yourself tradition.

Three Babes Bakeshop

Anna Derivi-Castellanos and Lenore Estrada, natives of the Central Valley, run Three Babes Bakeshop, a roving operation that recently settled in the Bayview, after moving into a commercial kitchen on Phelps Street. Like other neighborhood businesses, Three Babes is a small, entirely-from-scratch endeavor that initially secured funding through Kickstarter. Three Babes bakes buttery pies that top national top ten lists. Their salted honey walnut appears in glossy food magazines and travel guides. In addition to offering weekly pie subscriptions and pick-up in the Bayview, Three Babes pops up at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market on Saturdays.

Feve Artisan Chocolatier

Fourteen years ago, when Shawn Williams was a student in pastry school, he found the chocolate part of the curriculum beguiling. “We had to make a chocolate sculpture in a cold room with marble tables everywhere,” he remembers. “The experience was art meets science. I fell in love with the idea of having a chocolate factory.” In 2012, he made his dream a reality in the Bayview. “I wanted to be in a community with other food producers,” says Williams, owner of Feve, a chocolate factory with a small retail space at the corner of Keith and Underwood streets. A resident of the neighborhood, he’s quick to praise its virtues. “There’s great access to other parts of the city,” and compared to the rest of San Francisco, “it’s affordable, which is important for getting over hump of getting customers and building buzz,” says Williams. Five percent of Feve’s net profit goes to Kiva to assist cacao farmers around the world.

Laughing Monk Brewery

In the spirit of Belgian monks who brewed beer and sold it at monasteries, founder Andrew Casteel and brewer Jeff Moakler call each other “Brother.” Laughing Monk Brewery, which opened its doors last year, mixes old brewing traditions with modern flavors and local ingredients. Its tribute to the neighborhood, Bayview Gold, is a Belgian-style golden ale made with chamomile flowers grown in Bayview Community Gardens. In addition to 16 rotating taps and an open air bar, the brewery is committed to paying it forward, supporting local artists like muralist Shawn Bullen. While getting Laughing Monk off the ground, Casteel stumbled into another project: Helping create Imprint City, a Bayview nonprofit that places artists and studios in underused places. The organization is behind several large murals in the neighborhood, including the Sprayview outdoor museum. But it’s not just art that ties the brewery to the community. Food trucks cluster out front on Fridays and Saturdays, and Sunday mornings, Laughing Monk hosts a 90-minute yoga session that ends with a pint.

Seven Stills Brewery & Distillery

This July 29 marks one year since Laughing Monk’s neighbor, Seven Stills (a tribute to San Francisco’s seven hills) opened for business at UrbanPointSF, a shared industrial space for manufacturers and makers in the Bayview. In this sprawling brewery, distillery, and tap room, Tim Obert and Clint Potter, owners and former homebrewers, serve vodka, bitters, craft beer, and their signature whiskey, which is distilled from a base of craft beer. On Bayview Fridays (the first Friday of every month), Seven Stills joins Laughing Monk for food trucks and karaoke.

The city’s only mead distillery sits in a warehouse at the end of Shafter Avenue, the work of Sarah and Oron Benary. Using honey from Mendocino forests, they produce about 4,000 cases a year. Mead is an alcoholic drink that tastes like dry wine. It’s made by fermenting honey, water, and yeast, and usually herbs and spices are added. “The Bayview is down to earth, diverse, and connected,” says Oron of the community. “And I think it will stay diverse and mixed use. There’s such a great mix of industrial, commercial, residential spaces here.” For the Benarys, it’s not just the people, or the relatively affordable warehouse space that drew them to the Bayview from the Dogpatch, where SF Mead was first located. “This neighborhood has great weather,” says Oron Benary. “It’s nice and sunny, and even if it’s hot during the day, it cools down at night since we’re by the water. For our mead, that’s important.” The meadery attracts regulars who drop by on Saturdays, explains Benary, enthusiasts who come for new releases, curious first-time drinkers, and tourists en route to the airport.

Beach Coffee

It was 2014 and Charlie Boyd wasn’t impressed with the state of cold brew. “Bitter, watery, and boring,” he recalls. A high-level athlete looking for an afternoon pick-me-up, he had an idea for a drink that didn’t rely on sugar and milk for its flavor. Using coconut water instead of plain water, Boyd and his partner began cold brewing coffee with just three ingredients: Coffee, water, and coconut water derived from young Thai coconuts. The result was smooth, slightly sweet, low-calorie, and energizing. Beach Coffee solidifies the neighborhood’s status as a source of small-batch beverages of all kinds.

SF Honey & Pollen Co.

Seventeen years ago, John McDonald bought a warehouse near the end of Shafter Avenue for his cabinet-making shop. After taking up beekeeping — what began as a hobby — he converted the space into an urban apiary and beekeeping school. “In the Bayview, there’s blue skies and perfect temps,” says McDonald. “For good beekeeping and honey production, you need sun, heat, and clear skies, which isn’t always the case in San Francisco.” Since 2006, McDonald’s family-owned business has offered hands-on classes, drawing novices and experienced bee-keepers to his backyard oasis with its buzzing hives and organic garden. For McDonald, the Bayview’s appeal is about more than the weather. “Everyone really bands together and helps each other out,” he says, describing the neighborhood’s camaraderie.