Photograph by George Sakkestad
Sue Ann Van Ebbs learned to appreciate great coffee during her days at UC-Berkeley.
By Suzanne Cristallo
The 1970s for many Berkeley students were years of awakening to great coffee and the casual sophistication of the coffeehouse. Sue Ann Van Ebbs, then a student of sociology, experienced her first crêpes and espresso in what she remembers as "the really hippest place." She says it gave her the idea for Great Bear Coffee, a roasting house she and her brother, Mark Van Ebb, opened in Los Gatos six years ago.
Great Bear coffee comes from around the world--Sumatra, Africa, South America and Hawaii. "We don't have Kona, however," Van Ebb smiles, alluding to the recent news flutter concerning the misrepresentation of coffee from that region. "We stopped buying it before the news came out mainly because we spent a lot of money, and it didn't taste that great."
Each week Van Ebb's father, Joe, drives to Burlingame, where the coffee brokers have their warehouses, and fills his truck with gunnysacks of coffee beans. (Empty gunnysacks are given to customers who ask for them, by the way.) The beans are then scooped into huge roasters on Great Bear's premises 20 pounds at a time and roasted for 20 minutes.
The resulting blends are offered--each day a different variety--along with pastries, salads, pizzas and sandwiches in the part of the eatery known as the Los Osos Cafe. A big favorite for many customers is the Great Bear breakfast. A cheese-and-egg scramble served with toast or a choice of bagels with butter or cream cheese runs $2.10. Three banana pancakes cost $3.75. Twisted Toast--poppyseed braided egg-twist bread battered with egg, vanilla and cinnamon, grilled and topped with strawberries and maple syrup--is offered at $4.80.
Los Gatan Sue Ann, 41, and Campbell resident Mark, 38, are equal partners. Reared in Cupertino, they are the first in their family in the coffeehouse business.
Sue Ann spent the '80s in Santa Cruz managing a coffee-roasting house during the years when that kind of business quadrupled. She also was a cook and served as a bookkeeping consultant. Those experiences, along with Mark's business degree from San Jose State University, have allowed them to run their business successfully.
"I'm staunchly small business," says Sue Ann. "There is nothing like the creativity it stimulates."
Besides the changing coffee menu, the walls of the restaurant display a constantly changing array of art and photography by local artists.
Great Bear Coffee & Los Osos Cafe, 19 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos. Breakfast served Mon.-Fri., 6 a.m.- 1 p. m.; weekends 6 a.m.-2 p.m. Lunch daily 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. 395-8607.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 5, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.