At the corner of Sobrante Avenue and Valley View Road in El Sobrante, there’s a Japanese black pine bonsai tree in the middle of the lot. It was planted by the Adachi Florist & Nursery, which brothers Isaburo and Sadajiro Adachi started in 1905 with a greenhouse in El Cerrito. The tree, possibly planted around 1966 when the brothers opened their El Sobrante location, has seen that business thrive and then close down in 2017. For the past two years, the aesthetic pruning club of Lake Merritt College has tended to the tree as it has witnessed a new project that has slowly come to life around it — something the creators hope will nourish the community in myriad ways.
The hub is The Good Table Cafe, a pay-what-you-can establishment with the slogan “nourishment for body, mind, and spirit” that opened on Nov. 22 and will hold a grand opening celebration on Dec. 20. The space will also house a nursery, plant store, and farm kitchen for Planting Justice, an Oakland-based food sovereignty and economic justice nonprofit.
The Good Table Cafe
5166 Sobrante Ave. (at Valley View), El Sobrante
Open Wednesday to Friday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
At first, the Adachi family sold the property to a developer who planned to turn it into a gas station — but the residents, with 13 gas stations already in town, opposed it. Instead, in April 2019, the GoodTable LLC, a partnership between Mira Vista United Church of Christ (now called the Good Table United Church of Christ) and Planting Justice, bought the property from the developer. The two organizations, led by Reverend Dr. Melinda McLain and Gavin Raders, respectively, met after realizing they both wanted to purchase the property, and they joined forces to accomplish their shared goal.
“It’s just [this] really beautiful connection. Melinda and I hit it off right away,” Raders, co-founder and co-director at Planting Justice, told Berkeleyside in 2019. “We embarked on a pretty intensive process. We had pro-bono legal support from UC Berkeley, and [UC] Hastings [School of Law].”
Trying to maintain this history, Planting Justice and the Good Table are preserving the nursery’s original building and putting together an additional nursery on the location.
For the past year, while the space has been under construction, Planting Justice started hosting a weekly farmers market on the street in front of the property.
A place eight years in the making
McLain became the reverend at the Good Table United Church of Christ in September 2014. She was the driving force behind this project, in partnership with Raders. She got the idea in 2017, after the church had $2.5 million left over from the sale of their building, and McLain was tasked with figuring out with the church community what to create with this leftover money. The goal was to create something around food, justice, and the arts.
McLain said the cafe is like any other nice coffee shop, and so much more. Besides food and coffee, it will host a marketplace with crafts made by local artists and jams, jellies, and honey made by the Plating Justice farm kitchen. The menu is a work in progress, but there are plans to offer bread from San Francisco’s Rize Up Bakery, which has already been a part of the Planting Justice farmers market for the past year, in addition to a house-made gluten-free bread option. They’re making their own natural popsicles and natural sodas with wild fruit add-ins from the Planting Justice trees. The space has a full kitchen, so they plan to eventually have made-to-order food. To start, it is offering grab-and-go from different vendors such as El Cerrito Natural Grocery and Starter Bakery. They’re also planning to offer breakfast burritos and mochi donuts. For opening weekend, the cafe offered Proyecto Diaz coffee, Boichik bagels, Acme pastries, and Sol y Luna teas.
There is also a gathering space that can seat up to 100 and will have wellness, arts, and performing arts offerings.
The cafe model is pay-what-you-can and pay-it-forward; the team even had custom point of sale software created so that the pay-what-you-can is completely automated. When you step up to pay, the screen lets you choose to pay the suggested amount, or you can also choose to pay less or more. This payment system will also be offered at their events and classes.
“There’s some research from people who’ve done things like this to say that you’ll get about 15% who pay less and about 15% who’ll pay more,” McLain said. “Most people will pay what you ask, and hopefully we’ll be able to break even.”
Planting Justice is known for hiring formerly incarcerated staff, as well as other people with barriers to employment, and the Good Table Cafe will do the same. To find their employees, they’ve been reaching out to non-profits such as the Latina Center, Safe Home, and SOS Richmond to get in touch with members of the community who they can hire for the roles. They’re offering robust benefits and paying more than average for the area.
Building a space centered on community
El Sobrante means “the leftovers”, and McLain said she and the rest of the Good Table staff have been taking this sentiment to heart, getting lots of their equipment second-hand or through donation. They’ve found chairs everywhere, leading to every chair being different. McLain said they’re thinking about naming each chair. In their community space, where McLain will also hold her church services, there is a piano from 1966 that McLain got from a friend after she’d paid his bail. In the farm store, there’s wood from Castlemont High School when they replaced their bleachers. They also found a ModBar Espresso AV (an at least $13,000 under-counter espresso machine) that was donated from Salesforce. It was previously in a closet, after the Salesforce coffee shop realized they needed a bigger machine. McLain knew someone who used to work in food and beverage at Salesforce who was able to make the connection to get that machine, as well as other items, donated.
“Even though we’re pay-what-you-can, and we want to serve everybody, we’re also going to be offering, as somebody said, ‘Are you going to have bougie coffee?’ And it’s like, yes, yes, the answer is yes,” McLain said.
One of the major goals is to reduce social isolation by creating a place for the community to gather.
“We’re not going to run people off. We’re going to encourage them to stick around for the day,” McLain said. “Some of my church members are going to do things like adult coloring, and how would you like to learn how to crochet hats for the homeless, and in the meantime, you meet people, you talk to people, you get to know your neighbors.”
McLain describes El Sobrante as living in “Richmond’s shadow,” and noted that Richmond is a little limited, too. But El Sobrante has very few places for people to gather. There’s no public park and not a lot of places to go out for food or coffee.
The Good Table also aims to be a place where the community can gather skills and materials to make things at home. You will find recipes for jams, and you can also purchase a plant from the nursery for making your own fruit preserves at home.
“We’re trying to gently upgrade people’s food choices and then give them the means to grow it themselves around here,” McLain said. “It’s a great growing area, and a lot of the lots, especially in El Sobrante, have lots of room for gardens and stuff. They just don’t necessarily know how to start.”
It hasn’t been an easy process to get the Good Table Cafe open. After buying the property in April 2019, they survived the pandemic. In June 2021, all of the rough electrical was stolen overnight, which cost $125,000 to replace. That same week, there was a fire at the Planting Justice farm in El Sobrante that took 200 trees. The cafe planned to open in mid-July, then September, but was delayed waiting on inspection and getting the power turned on.
“The rest of the community, like the Chamber of Commerce, they’re just nuts about this, because it’s going to help every other little, struggling business, and it’s going to help the whole community to have people not just racing through our town going somewhere else,” McLain said. “We really have volume passing us every day, so we feel pretty good about our chances of luring them off the road and into this really special place.”
The cafe’s outdoor patio area that they plan to cover in vines, to make a cozy “secret garden” like space. They have two doors: a red door and a blue door. The blue door leads to the gathering space, while the red door leads to the cafe. McLain said that the building is “mid-century modern” in design. Behind the cafe is the farm store for Planting Justice. The farm store will use the old point of sale counter from Adachi’s nursery.
“I believe that it’ll make the community more resilient, more connected,” McLain said. “We already have some really great people doing all kinds of things. There’s a mural that just went up down the street here. We’ve got some active people in the community trying to make El Sobrante less of a place you pass through and more of a place where you hang out.”
The bonsai tree sits right in front of the entrance to the cafe, community space, and nursery. The tree has seen the space through its iterations and will look on through this next one.
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How can I donate to the effort of this cafe?
Hi Ann – Please visit our website the-good-table.org and scroll down to our donate button. https://secure.myvanco.com/L-ZY4A/home Thanks so much for your support!
I receive social security but would like to contribute $10 maybe weekly not sure is there a way I can do this via the internet securely?