Where Friendship is Always On the Menu
Our Story: Rabbi Levi asked Aliya if she'd like to work at the new Challah Shoppe there on Friday afternoons. Aliya was overjoyed — working in the food industry had been her dream ever since she traded Barney for the Food Network!
The Challah Shoppe gave young people with disabilities a chance to build vocational skills — greeting customers, taking orders, making change, using the card reader — in a small, calm, inviting space, without the pressure of a busy store.
Aliya showed up for her "work" every Friday for over a year. She grew more confident making change, sharpened her focus, and loved chatting with customers, thanking them and wishing them a good day.
In the fall of 2025, Rabbi Levi suggested we expand the Challah Shoppe into a full cafe. Because of Aliya's steadfast commitment, he said we should name it Aliya's Friendship Cafe. He asked me, Aliya's Grandma, to gather a group of people who might want to explore whether a cafe like this — one that gives people with disabilities real, supportive employment and life skills — could work in Tiburon.
I'd made a lot of friends at Tom Price Park in Belvedere/Tiburon, where dog owners gather every afternoon. Over the years we'd thrown countless park parties — birthdays, holidays, or just because. Aliya was a regular there, and everyone knew her. So was Lance, a bright and spirited young man who gets around by wheelchair and communicates verbally and with his huge smile. He came every day with his dog and devoted caregiver, and he and Aliya became friends. We learned Lance's mom, Mary, is the COO at Venables Bell & Partners (VB+P), an advertising agency, and we invited her to be a member of the planning committee.
Interest grew quickly, and we formed a small committee to explore what it would take: what skills we'd need, what a cafe like this required to get off the ground, and — most important — whether the community would actually support it. We visited similar cafes around Northern California — The Purple Tree in Sacramento, Autistry Studio in San Rafael, Ada's Cafe in Palo Alto — and every one of them told us the same thing: start small, keep it simple. We wrote our Mission and Vision statements at our first official meeting, and Mary offered to help with branding, logo, and website.
We planned to start simple — a coffee cart with hot and cold drinks and a few sweet treats — but the food industry has a lot of rules: health permits, commissary certificates, food handler certificates, refrigeration, handwashing sinks. It started to feel discouraging, and we hadn't even bought a cart yet.
Then Rabbi Levi noticed a sign outside the local plant nursery, Ground, advertising pour-over coffee. I stopped in to ask the owner, Erin, how it all worked. When I explained our idea — training and employing people with disabilities to run a coffee cart — she asked whether we had a cart, whether we knew they cost $7,000 to $10,000, and whether we knew refrigeration (and therefore power) was required by law. We didn't. We didn't have a nickel, either.
Then Erin offered us her own cart — beautifully built, with refrigeration and a sink — free of charge, and offered to look into permits with the county on our behalf. It was an extraordinary gift.
At our third meeting, we settled on the words that define us: inclusion, diversity, friendship, community, empowerment, potential, joy. VB+P’s Senior Designer, Dani Saputo, turned those into logo concepts, and Tamera — another friend from the park, who brought her marketing expertise — developed our taglines and designed all our signage, posters, flyers, business cards, stationery, and T-shirts. Then Mary worked with VB+P’s Senior Studio Specialist, Jenny Trull, on our website. We ordered Kosher baked goods from two bakeries in New York and held a tasting party at the park to choose our favorites, along with our coffee. We met with vocational advisors and interviewed our first Interns. And a fellow park friend, JV — our "Hostess with the Mostest" — made the logo stickers for our treat bags.
We decided to start small: Sundays, 10:30 am to 2:30 pm, one day a week. On June 28, 2026, Aliya's Friendship Cafe opened for its first practice session — coffee brewed, treats bagged and labeled, cold brew and sparkling water chilling, and our Interns ready to go. Twenty-five friends from the park showed up to support us. A true community effort.
With the dedication of our wonderful team — Mary, Tamera, Paritem, JV, Rabbi Levi, and Grandma Evie — and the extraordinary generosity of Erin at Ground Nursery, Aliya's Friendship Cafe was born.