The Rise of Food Pop-Ups, Social Media’s Role as Restaurants, Cafes Get Squeezed
Written by Shela Ho
Illustrations by Michelle Quach
Editor’s Note: shades Magazine debuts this column to share insights of Women of Color through their creative explorations and life journey.
Meet Our Cultural Observers
Shela Ho and Michelle Quach meet on a bi-weekly basis to catch up on life. Once high school friends, their paths diverged as their careers developed with Shela as an accountant and Michelle as a graphic designer. But some of their commonalities remain unchanged for more than a decade. Their enthusiasm for a hearty conversation — and for coffee — give them more reasons for social exchanges.
“It came naturally to us to use our meetings as an opportunity to explore new cafe experiences,” said Shela. “In our eyes, cafes not only provide a cozy third space to wind down from the stressors of everyday life, but also share a glimpse into the owner’s passions and lifestyle through scents, flavors and ambiance created within the cafe walls. A cafe can introduce a slice of another city thousands of miles away or an unexplored artistic view of our foggy San Francisco neighborhoods for the affordable price of a coffee or pastry. This column is inspired by conversations during these cafe visits, as we immerse ourselves in an environment curated by visionaries.”
For the food illustrations in today’s column, Michelle explained, “I’m inspired by the look of rotoscoping as well as Japanese editorial imagery that combines photography with a hand drawn feel. I like the idea of a human element even though the image is digital.”
For their portrait illustration, she said, “I was heavily inspired by illustrators Yu Nagaba and Wiwadd for their use of simple and expressive lines.”
A taste of Robu Coffee
Stepping out of the parking lot tucked behind the main pedestrian street of Sunnyvale’s Heritage district in San Francisco, Michelle and I scan our surroundings for the sign to our destination before spotting the “We Are Open!” banner over a small, brick-walled cafe with two business names.
As we confirm the storefront with the video on social media, a few groups in their teens and 20s exit with Robu Coffee’s signature pastel cream coffees in their hands: Pinks from the cherry blossom latte with boba, purples from the coconut ube coffee, greens from the dirty matcha latte.
Robu Coffee is a woman-owned business offering fusion craft coffee with a focus on Vietnamese phin-dripped coffee and Asian-inspired flavors. Their diverse menu varies from uncommon coffee classics such as Vienna Einspänner and vegan-friendly Vietnamese coffee, to their one-of-a-kind creations: The cherry blossom latte, pho coffee with star anise and cardamom notes, amongst many others. Upon opening in the spring of this year, Robu Coffee has been running as a pop-up for five months within the existing K-Tea café, and recently opened its own brick-and-mortar in Sunnyvale. Michelle and I had discovered the business through local food influencers on social media and just so happened to catch them on their last pop-up day at K-tea café.
On this occasion, our target at Robu Coffee is the Vietnamese egg coffee. Also known as Cà Phê Trứng, Egg coffee is a Vietnamese specialty consisting of a robusta coffee base and topped with a thick foam made of egg yolks, condensed milk and sugar. The concentrated bitterness of the robusta coffee beans against the creamy egg foam creates a thrilling experience of two juxtaposed flavors in one sip.
This unique drink originates from Hanoi – the capital of Vietnam – and has recently begun to gather a growing recognition within the Bay Area café scene. With Robu Coffee’s rendition, I was impressed by the bold coffee taste that shone through even after the offset with the richness of the egg foam.
Robu’s upcoming transition to brick-and-mortar is a much-needed success story for hopeful entrepreneurs with pop-up businesses, and overall for the declining food economy within San Francisco.
Despite the city’s efforts to rejuvenate small businesses, San Francisco’s restaurant scene has been struggling to stay afloat in the midst of infamously high overhead costs, especially commercial rent and a declining number of diners.
“Total revenue for food service businesses, including restaurants, pop-ups and food trucks, was down about 20% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with the same period in 2019, after adjusting for inflation,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
This has resulted in the closure and relocation of many beloved restaurants in the past two years alone. At the same time, efforts to enter the restaurant space are costly with no guaranteed success.
The Chronicle reported a prominent example of this struggle in 2021 through Jason Yu’s $200,000 expenditure toward a matcha-themed ice cream shop in the Mission District, which never came to fruition due to complex permit issues. Naz Khorram, owner of popular Mission Street wine bar Arcana, echoed similar sentiments regarding the permit process in his opinion column in April 2024 for The San Francisco Standard.
The struggle against rent and operational affordability has drastically redefined the meaning of managing a storefront to emerging entrepreneurs. As brick-and-mortar becomes less financially viable, new business owners must explore alternative first steps to build their branding and consumer engagement. We have seen this through the rise in home businesses, street fairs and pop-up collaborations with established storefronts in recent years. While Robu Coffee’s pop-up stayed consistent at K-tea for several months, most collaborative efforts have a much shorter time frame, such as the occasional weekend or just a one-day operation.
This is where social media marketing plays a crucial role in the success and survival of small pop-up businesses.
Social media has planted itself as a critical tool for restaurant discovery in the past two decades, with a pivotal moment being the invention of a user-rating platform for businesses such as Yelp. The ability for anyone to comment on a restaurant or cafe has encouraged proactive participation in the dining experience beyond simply “good” or “bad” and empowered a community of food enthusiasts to share their opinions in the same way as a Michelin food critic.
As popular social media shifted toward short video-centric styles seen on TikTok and Instagram, food recommendations also shifted to showcase visually appealing footage of the food, drinks and commentary all within a few seconds of time. Given the low effort engagement required in exchange for knowledge of a stimulating yet accessible local activity, restaurant and cafe content on these platforms quickly became a hit. Viral restaurant recommendations on TikTok garner millions of views at a time, leading to unprecedented lines for previously unknown small businesses.
“Foodie” influencers, like Internet sensation Keith Lee, are able to make a living through viral food-focused videos and posts. As food content permeates online communities, it is increasingly common now for people, especially millennials and Gen Zers, to introduce their hobbies as “cafe hopping” or “trying new restaurants.”
The proliferation of “foodie” culture via social media sets the stage for new entrepreneurs in the pop-up space. Most new food businesses are quick to establish official social media accounts and participate in this cultural shift, whether that be through their own content or commissioning local influencers who have an existing following. Some tech-savvy business owners, like Poorboy Coffee, even film their own behind-the-scenes vlogs of operating a pop-up location in the Sunset District of San Francisco.
These personable insights into the humans crafting intention and products behind a small business invite a genuine online connection prior to anyone’s first visit or sampling of a product. Thanks to the randomized algorithm of TikTok and Instagram, a business’s active Social Networking Service (SNS) presence can attract a wide demographic of people from all walks of life. This is key for pop-ups operating on a limited time frame.
Mt. Kakigori’s Bay Area presence
I have seen firsthand success of this social media formula through the rising popularity of Mt. Kakigori, a business serving Japanese-style shaved ice and crafted with Californian ingredients. Founded by Emeryville-based food scientist Ting Lin, Mt. Kakigori travels around the Bay through one-day collaborations with local shops and offers two unique shaved ice options with every pop-up. Mt. Kakigori’s appeal resides in their shaved ice’s unpredictable yet delightful ingredient combinations (i.e., tomato strawberry, watermelon cucumber fresca, corn with cheddar cheese ice cream) and a constantly evolving menu.
Similarly to Robu Coffee, Mt. Kakigori is a business I had stumbled upon via social media, and its photo collection of previous shaved ice creations on Instagram convinced me to stop by for a taste when it held a San Francisco pop-up. Given the rarity of a Japanese shaved ice appearance in the city, I of course, invited Michelle to join the visit.
The first shaved ice flavor we had was Peach Oolong. The fresh and natural sweetness of the yellow peaches, followed by a gentle aftertaste of Taiwanese oolong milk tea, was what convinced me into a second and third visit to their pop-ups in the following months. In the short time between these events, I was impressed by the growth from a dozen or so customers waiting at a time during our first visit, to a line out the door trailing down the block, to a ticket system scheduling my turn to order an hour later.
In spite of sparse seating arrangements often associated with such pop-ups, people around me arrived in couples, families and even larger groups of six or seven. This shared excitement for the dessert prompted conversations between strangers as we all waited in line, forming inadvertent connections in the food enthusiast community.
Pop-up businesses and social media marketing are at the forefront of paving an exciting new path for the food scene in San Francisco. However, pop-ups will not singlehandedly solve the problem of restaurant closures since their temporary nature still implies a loss of permanent shared spaces for the local community.
It will be interesting to observe how up and coming food entrepreneurs transform San Francisco’s dining economy with social media as a growingly pervasive tool.
Reach Shela at h.shela.ucsb@gmail.com and Michelle at hellomiquach@gmail.com.
Updated Feb. 2, 2025