A coffee shop rooted in six generations of a Chiapas farming family has opened its doors at 701 Illinois Street in the Dogpatch, tucked inside the YMCA facility that faces Crane Cove Park. Chula Cafe, owned by Mayra Bracamontes and Adrian Betanzos, opened on September 12 in a newly renovated storefront with most of its seating spread across an outdoor concrete courtyard overlooking the waterfront.
The opening carries more institutional weight than a typical neighborhood café launch. According to the YMCA of Greater San Francisco, Chula Cafe is the first commercial food and beverage business to operate inside one of its branch locations in the organization's 175-year history. It's a notable milestone for a nonprofit that has run Bay Area branches for generations without ever leasing space to an outside food vendor.
The Dogpatch YMCA itself is a relatively new addition to the neighborhood. Per Funcheap, the branch opened in May 2025 as the 15th Bay Area YMCA location and the organization's first newly built San Francisco facility in 30 years, occupying a rehabilitated historic industrial warehouse at the Illinois Street address.
A Family Coffee Line That Runs Back to 1871
The story behind Chula Cafe's beans stretches back further than the shop itself. As reported by Gazetteer SF, Mayra Bracamontes' great-grandfather exported his first bag of coffee beans from the family farm in Tapachula, Chiapas, to San Francisco in 1871, and Bracamontes is now the sixth generation of her family involved in the coffee business. She grew up in Tapachula, as did her husband and business partner Adrian Betanzos, before the two eventually reunited in the Bay Area — he for a job at Apple roughly two decades before the café's opening, she about ten years later.
Additional family history traces the lineage to Carlos Gris, who planted coffee trees on his farm Majagual. Bracamontes' father wrote a book in 2020 about the family business.
From a Wedding Favor to a Storefront
Before Chula Cafe had a physical address, it existed as an online and wholesale coffee retailer selling blends in stores around San Francisco, per the Gazetteer SF report. The idea traces back to the couple's own 400-person wedding at the family farm in Tapachula, where they handed out bags of the farm's coffee to guests. They launched Chula Cafe in 2018, with Bracamontes pregnant with the couple's first child at the time, and released a product for a friend's wedding the following year.
“That was a huge motivation to finally say, let's start the business,” Betanzos told Gazetteer SF. Bracamontes, who had worked as an artist and photographer and in social programs and agro-tourism at coffee farms, said she chose to continue her family's coffee business. Betanzos works as a designer and engineer, per the same account.
The café's growth was shaped by help from San Francisco's existing coffee scene, the outlet reports. Verve provided packaging recommendations, Sightglass lent equipment, and Coffeeshop connected the founders with their retail space. Chula Cafe roasts its beans locally in Potrero Hill at Ikon Coffee, a neighborhood micro-roastery on 22nd and Mississippi Streets, according to the Potrero View.
What's on the Menu, and a Neighborhood Supplier
The menu blends straightforward espresso drinks with signature creations tied to the family's Chiapas roots. Chula Cafe serves drip coffee, americanos, and cappuccinos alongside the cardamom-spiced Chula Latte and a Mexican hot chocolate topped with toasted marshmallows, the article notes. The Gentle, one of its offerings, has 66 percent less caffeine than standard arabica coffee, while the Honey-Do is processed with honey. The Homie stands as the café's most popular signature blend, and the shop also offers tea and conchas.
Food comes from a longtime Potrero Hill institution. Chiotras Grocery, a market on Rhode Island Street that has operated for more than 100 years, supplies sandwiches to Chula Cafe and served as the first retail store to stock its packaged beans, according to the Potrero View. Inside the café, the words “We Drink Mexican Coffee” are displayed prominently. “To create a space where everybody will feel welcome and can just relax and enjoy,” Bracamontes said, per Gazetteer SF.
Chula Cafe's direct-farm sourcing fits into a much larger picture of Mexican coffee production. Chiapas is Mexico's largest coffee-producing state, contributing between 30 and 41 percent of the nation's total output, with most of the crop grown by smallholder farmers using shade-grown agroforestry methods, according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. Nationally, Mexico is a coffee-producing country. More than 500,000 coffee producers work in Mexico, the same source notes.
