Ritual Coffee Roasters
Eileen Rinaldi drank a shot of espresso at Vivace in Seattle and decided to open a shop that sold nothing else. She opened this one on Valencia Street in 2005. By day three, the company says, the line reached the corner.
Why go
She started roasting the next year, on a five-kilo Probat in the back of the room. In 2007 the buyer Ryan Brown started going straight to farmers. In 2009 the roasting moved to its own plant in SoMa. In 2010 Ritual dropped the French press for individual Hario V-60 pour-overs.1
The company calls itself a pioneer of West Coast light roasting. It is independent and woman-owned.2 That roast travels well past the Mission, into other people's espresso machines down the Peninsula.
I have not found a recent review of this counter.
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever the seasonal espresso is. In summer 2026 it was Goth Summer, with green apple, graham cracker crust and dark chocolate on the bag.2
- Order: a pour-over.
- Order: a bag of the direct-trade single origin to take home.
- Avoid: coming for the food.
What locals & experts say
- Taylor Abrams, The Infatuation, March 2017, writing about Ritual's Hayes Valley shop rather than this one:
The drinks are delicious and strong and the menu is limited to croissants.
4 - Cesar Hernandez, in the Chronicle's Bay Area coffee guide, May 2022, records that Anne Moser's bakery Backhaus in San Mateo pulls every espresso shot on Ritual beans.3
Good to know
- Getting in: a counter, no bookings.
- Where: 1026 Valencia Street, in the Mission.
- Doors: this page is the Valencia flagship. The company also runs Hayes Valley, the Haight, the Castro, Napa and a cafe inside Terminal 1B at the airport.
Verdict
could-visit — The company is more interesting than the room it started in.