A new cafe opening on Divisadero Street is betting that San Franciscans want olive oil in their coffee, their smoothies, and their granola. Hannah Collins Tate will open Olive Juice, a health-focused cafe, at 354 Divisadero St. in Lower Haight, launching as a back-patio pop-up in mid-October before the full cafe debuts sometime in 2027.
A Pop-Up First, a Full Cafe Later
To start, Olive Juice will operate as a pop-up on the back patio, with the full cafe opening later, according to The San Francisco Standard. The pop-up will keep hours Thursday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., with expanded hours planned for later on. It's a soft launch for a concept that will eventually anchor a brick-and-mortar space in one of the city's more competitive cafe corridors.
The menu leans into Northern California's seasonal bounty, the outlet reports, with a rotating quiche, a dill-forward egg salad sandwich, and a Greek yogurt bowl topped with olive-oil granola. But the real hook is the olive oil itself, worked into nearly everything on the menu, including the espresso drinks and smoothies that give the cafe its name.
Smoothies and Lattes Get the Olive Oil Treatment
The Olive You a Lot smoothie packs in bananas, dates, almond butter, vanilla, maple, colostrum, pearl powder, sea salt, oat milk, and, naturally, olive oil, per the same report. On the espresso side, the Olive Oil Cacao Espresso is shaken with raw cacao and combined with almond butter, olive oil, milk, and sea salt.
Tate told the outlet she wanted the cafe to feel approachable rather than austere. “I wanted Olive Juice to be somewhere you can come all the time, not just when you're trying to be ‘good,’” she said. She also described her cooking philosophy in simple terms: “For me, it's about really good ingredients, doing very little to them and finding balance.”
The Olive Juice name has two inspirations, the article notes: the classic French Duralex juice glass and an old “olive juice” joke from Tate's mother. Tate has said she was inspired by a local juicery she encountered in Sedona, Arizona.
A Designer Steps Behind the Counter
Tate has never run a restaurant before, but she brings nearly two decades of hospitality experience to the venture. In 2009 she launched Roy Hospitality, a design firm that has worked on more than 300 restaurants, including Delfina, SPQR, and George's Donuts & Merriment, the report states.
Olive oil-spiked drinks aren't unique to Olive Juice. Starbucks rolled out its Oleato line, which infused Partanna olive oil into its Caffe Latte, Iced Shaken Espresso, and cold foam, first in Italy, then in Southern California in spring 2023, followed by a nationwide launch in January, according to CNBC. Starbucks later pulled Oleato from U.S. menus in early November, though cafes in China, Italy, and Japan kept serving the drinks.
What Nutrition Experts Say About the Trend
The health case for olive oil in coffee is more modest than social media hype suggests. A registered dietitian at the University of Utah has said combining olive oil and coffee poses no high risk, but cautioned that it “is not going to have these magical properties” beyond what comes from an overall healthy diet. A tablespoon of olive oil runs about 119 calories, the dietitian noted, and adding oil or fat to any food or beverage automatically increases calorie consumption.
For Olive Juice, that tradeoff seems to be part of the pitch: indulgence framed as wellness, served from a food truck on a Lower Haight patio until the permanent space is ready sometime next year.
