Outside Ritual before a Ritual Coffee Club Bike Posse ride (May 2007). Laptops!

Ritual Coffee Roasters, Mission location

1026 Valencia Street, between 21st and 22nd Streets

Hours

Mon-Fri: 6 am to 10 pm

Sat: 7 am to 10 pm

Sun: 7 am to 9 pm

Phone

(415) 641-1024

Website

http://ritualroasters.com and myspace

Founder(s)

Eileen Hassi, Jeremy Tooker

Established

May 12, 2005

Payment Method

Cash, credit card

Disability Access

Excellent; bathroom accessible even for power-chairs

WiFi

Free

Ritual Roasters is a coffee shop in the heart of the Mission District. It is known as the place where all the hipsters in the Mission get their coffee, it's trendy as shit.

Ritual was started by Eileen Hassi & Jeremy Tooker on May 12, 2005. In the summer of 2007, Hassi bought Tooker's stake in the company for a rumored $50,000. Tooker is started a new coffee shop, Fourbarrel Coffee, at 375 Valencia in 2008. Tooker and Hassi reportedly made a deal, as a part of the buy-out, that Tooker would not hire any Ritual baristas for one year.

Around 2005, Ritual was generally considered some of the best coffee in San Francisco, with Blue Bottle Coffee edging in as its most prominent competitor. On April 20, 2007, Ritual opened a miniature cafe inside Flora Grubb Gardens at 1634 Jerrold Avenue in the Bayview; which has since closed. Ritual roasts their own beans in-shop with a roaster toward the middle of the cafe. For most of their early existence they were buying beans roasted by Stumptown Coffee and having them shipped directly from Portland, Oregon "several times a week to ensure freshness", but they do all their own roasting now.

Ritual's totally awesome logo (copyright Ritual).

In 2005, the cafe itself had very high ceilings, hardwood floors, lots of tables, loud awesome music, comfy couches, and rotating art. They had a bunch of really cool hanging lights, too.

Menu items include, well, coffee and espresso (okay, and tea). They've also got some vegan treat type things, and depending on when you go there may be different types of vegan tasties to be had (vegan donuts, cupcakes, etc). Ritual has a Clover 1s coffee machine that they use for brewing custom made cups. Check out their guide to making coffee.

Want your balls cut off? Then get a screwdriver and take off the outlet covers. (photo 2007; brett lider)

Ritual has developed a strong reputation as being a sort of roaming tech urban nomad cafe. With their free and reliable WiFi, plentiful tables, and delicious coffee they've developed quite a following amongst people with laptops. Ritual was even featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle in this story about the laptop + cafe trend.

Because of the high concentration of people connected to the 'net who aren't talking to each other, Ritual is a bit of a craigslist missed connections paradise, with hilariously awkward posts such as "anyone at ritual right now? 9/28/2007 at 8:50 PM - m4w - 31 (mission district)" not uncommon.

Tech notabilities: the original flickr team used to meet at ritual once a week, rubyredlabs (web design shop) had their harvest party here, some guys from tailrank.com meet here during the week, some google teams go here once and a while for "city work" days, and some guys from Technorati show up here regularly. Be warned that some tech creeps might spy on your AIM conversations to hit on you, though.

Ritual also has a strong bicycle tradition, with tons of bikes locked up outside, Critical Mass signs around before the ride, and posters advertising local bicycle film festivals. Oh, and even their own bike posse!

Ritual used to have a bazillion power outlets you could plug your laptop into, and they'd have them covered up only on the weekends. During the second week of March 2007 (a date that shall live in infamy) they covered up nearly all of their power outlets permanently in an effort to encourage higher turnover and cut their $2,000/month electric bill down.

On February 6, 2008, just one day after the pink building across the street caught fire, Ritual's roaster caught on fire. It sent smoke pouring off the roof and into the street.