Kingston Café Serves San Mateo With Organic, Fair-Trade Coffee

Written by Brian De Los Santos

Cari Rotoli wanted a cup of coffee while standing at North Shoreview Elementary School, waiting for her kids. She and a fellow parent bemoaned the fact that they didn’t have time to make the drive downtown, but wanted a cup of joe.

Then she felt a nudge and turned to find her friend pointing at a vacant shop across the street.

“She just said, ‘If you opened a coffee shop there, I’d be there every day,” Rotoli recalls. “I just laughed at her and was like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ ”

Years after that chuckle, she ended up opening Kingston Café, a coffee shop located at 19 N. Kingston St. that provides San Mateo with organic, fair-trade coffee.

But, the thing is, she’s not exactly a coffee person.

“Oddly enough, my husband and I are tea and cocoa people if anything, so we had to learn,” Rotoli said. “It’s been a dream to have a place of this like my own, a restaurant or something like this.”

“I saw a need, not that there’s not enough coffee in the area, but a need for a particular kind,” she said.

She’d lived in the surrounding neighborhood for 10 years, and it bothered her that the only thing in the area was an abundance of liquor stores. 

“But it was like, ‘What else you got?’ ” she said.

So now, Rotoli has created a place in the neighborhood where residents can lounge and enjoy Equator Coffee, a fair-trade roaster based out of San Rafael. The company actually came to San Mateo to help train her coffee crafting skills when the business was starting.

But she’s still learning, she jokes.

“I feel like I’m still learning the latte art. A lot of it is accidental, like ‘Oh look, it’s a butterfly. It’s Michael Jackson, look at that,” Rotoli laughed. “It’s been fun.”

Kingston Café isn’t just a coffee shop. According to its website, it “provides a comfortable, casual, community-oriented place for the neighborhood to gather, eat, relax and socialize.” It’s a place to hang out, with pastries, sandwiches, salads and other snacks to pair with a dark roast. 

She actually encourages customers to stay for the longhaul. There are large, wide tables where patrons can come in, enjoy a cup of coffee and camp out while accomplishing work with Wi-Fi.

The café also features — and sells — local art, along with a book nook — where customers can either take a book or leave a book to enjoy. Occasionally, the shop plays host to events and live music as well.

The café has been in business for a year and a half now, and while the shop is still trying to establish itself, Rotoli is happy with its place for now. 

“It’ll be another couple years before we’ll know if we’ll really make it,” she said. “But I feel like the response is really good, we have great reviews on Yelp and I think the neighborhood really identifies with having a place to walk to that’s theirs.”

Kingston Cafe is located at 19 N Kingston St., San Mateo.