“It’s a family first and a business second.” That’s Great Bear Coffee in a nutshell, according to Eric Bailey, general manager of the cozy little coffee house and espresso bar located in downtown Los Gatos, Calif. “The Bear,” as it is affectionately known around this upscale Silicon Valley hamlet, has a steady and loyal customer base, and therefore sees little need for marketing gimmicks or ploys beyond the fundamental coffee shop amenities.
“All our coffee is really fresh; we care about that a lot,” says Bailey, a 13-year veteran of Great Bear. “We’re constantly looking for high quality. We roast our beans twice a week; we firmly believe in not letting coffee (beans) sit longer than a week and a half. And we’re a community-oriented shop. We encourage employee individuality, and it’s very common to see them become friends with customers.”
That friendly, family-type atmosphere has manifested good business, even during recent hard times. “In talking to vendors, we’re doing a lot better than other places.” Bailey says. “A big part of that is a majority of our customers have been coming in since we opened.”
History: Focus Shifts From Food To Coffee
Bailey runs the day-to-day operations for founder and owner Sue Anne Van Epps, who opened the shop in 1991 as a full-scale eatery. Bailey recalls the manic days when cooks and food servers bounded off one another like amusement park bumper cars while preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner in the shop’s tiny kitchen. After about 10 years, he says the restaurant thing “got to be too much, the kitchen was just too small,” and Van Epps decided to focus more on coffee.
A self-proclaimed “people person,” according to a 2002 Saratoga News article, Van Epps comes from the school of good coffee and good conversation. And while that philosophy still is reflected in her shop today, Great Bear has progressed with the times and serves as a comfortable place for the wired and wireless – students, telecommuters or those who just want to plug in, log on and get lost in the World Wide Web.
Although Van Epps currently resides out of state, Bailey says she maintains a keen interest in the business aspect of the shop, keeping abreast of trends through trade magazines and other industry channels. And she still does all the coffee purchasing. “She keeps a really good eye on it,” Bailey says.
South Beach Via Aribica
Great Bear brews a South Beach-style coffee, something Bailey says was made popular in the 1960s at coffee shops along California’s central coast from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara. “It’s a darker, longer-roast, strong-flavored coffee – not like the Seattle style with foam decorations. It’s focused on taste,” he says.
Great Bear uses aribica beans, mainly from Africa and South America, in all its coffees, as opposed to the robusta beans used in many Starbucks coffees. And “The Bear” is very particular about its roasting process. “Two things (our roasters) have to watch for because we roast our beans at such a high temperature (450 degrees) are listening for the beans popping and checking the color and texture,” Bailey says. “We usually keep our roasters a long time; it’s a job you really have to focus on.”
Signature Blend, Drink
A blend dubbed Blue Note is the shop’s most popular coffee, according to Bailey. It’s an Italian dark roast containing beans from Guatemala, Ethiopia and New Guinea. Great Bear’s Osos espresso blend – a combination of Brazilian, Guatemalan and Ethiopian beans – also has grown in popularity. “Ethiopian is becoming harder to purchase,” he says. “It’s in high demand and goes into a lot of coffees. Starbucks used to buy up entire crops, so we would have to find an alternative.”
While many customers may not know which blend is being dispensed from the Great Bear vats, they do know what they’re getting when they order a Chocolate Coffee Cream, the shop’s signature drink. Bailey says the “CCC” basically is a chocolate milkshake with caffeine and differs greatly from the Starbucks Frappuccino in that it contains cold-filtered coffee – allowing for a smoother taste – and real ice cream. “During the summer, we’ll go through 25 three-gallon jugs of ice cream in a week,” he says.
Keeping It Simple
Great Bear relies almost exclusively on word-of-mouth advertising, and the word has spread even beyond Los Gatos’ borders. Bailey says he ships many of the shop’s blends to points across the U.S. “We’ve really just made a name for ourselves, and I think that speaks to the quality of the coffee,” he says. “We’re embedded in a lot of people’s minds.”
Van Epps has resisted opportunities to expand the business with additional locations as well as offers to sell the original shop, not wanting to complicate or compromise her business ideals, Bailey says. At one point, some years ago, Bailey himself toyed with idea of buying “The Bear,” something he now counts as a passing fancy. That’s not to say he hasn’t valued his time there. “It’s been a fun place to work – everybody gets along,” he says. “My favorite thing is it’s a community.”
Great Bear Coffee
19 N. Santa Cruz Ave.
Los Gatos, CA 95030
(408) 395-8607
