Building Relationships with Each Roast
olilu (pronounced aw-lee-loo)
At Olilu, it starts with love.
We love our community of coffee lovers, and we take pride in building relationships while embracing differences in taste preferences.
Let the aroma, flavors, and warmth you experience be our signature touch. We’re proud to offer an approachable, positive, and exciting coffee experience. Just look at that happy bean crew!
15 years and counting in the coffee industry. Jon was a barista circa 2009, apprenticing and brewing alongside Barefoot Coffee Roasters of Santa Clara, CA, dabbling around the coffee scene in La Jolla, Bird Rock, and San Diego generally, before moving to the greater SF area to live and work there.
We’ve been enjoying great (and sometimes admittedly not so great) coffee since the early 2000’s. Our adventures often include a visit to at least one local specialty coffee establishment wherever we traveled. Each has its unique clientele, climate, and style. In short, we saw a good thing in coffee. We saw how great coffee experiences can contribute to a positive sense of community that unites people. We like that. There was a common feeling we shared after visiting some of those roasters and shops, and, in conversation mode, it went something like this.
Jon: Hey Nicki.
Nicki: Hey what.
Jon: You know, we need to start our own coffee place some day.
Nicki: Yea! Let’s do it right now!
Jon: How about we plan a bit first…?
Nicki: (off in the distance) I’m getting the drawing boarddddd……..!
So it was never a question of whether we wanted to commit to the pursuit. It was more a matter of when.
Notwithstanding rational fears that accompany the process of starting a business, what we feared more was letting opportunity slip away while we waited for that perfect astral alignment to signal us to get started.
Inspired by our own four* little beans, we moved forward to begin offering our best work to our community, our friends, and our family. We believe in making small positive impacts wherever we are, and for it to be a tangible model to inspire our children.
We depart from the legacy model of coffee roasting and store shelves in order to bring you the best the world has to offer in specialty coffee, convenience of delivery, and experience.
-Jon, Nicki, and the crew (Lucas/Linus/Ollie/Olivine)
