Not many restaurants can say they offer an order of a “Huge Case of 96 rolls, Double-Ply, Individually Wrapped” toilet paper on their menu as a regular item amidst the list of sandwiches, main entrees, salads, soups and side orders.
But Ladle & Leaf, formerly the San Francisco Soup Company, does.
The San Francisco Soup Company was established in 1999 with one location in the Crocker Galleria. Co-owner Jennifer Sarver said that she got the idea from Seinfeld’s sixth episode of the seventh season, “Soup Nazi.” She and Steve Sarver decided a soup company seemed like a good idea for San Francisco because of the windy and foggy nature of the city. There weren’t any other restaurants that served more than a couple of soup options and people in the financial district were starting to get really excited about eating healthier foods.
The San Francisco Soup Company became a quick lunch stop for office workers to get a bite to eat during their break.
Eventually, the reason that brought the restaurant to the city was the same that required the owners to rebrand and change its name. Soup is a weather dependent food. They found that during the winter when the weather was cold outside, their sales went up, but during the summer, it was hard to get business. The San Francisco Soup Company incorporated sandwiches and salads into their menu in order to engage more customers during the summer, but nobody was trying the non-soup options because of the way the company was branded.
“We found it was hard to be taken seriously as a salad or sandwich company with the name San Francisco Soup Company,” Sarver said. “Maybe you’d get a salad if you came in, but you really came to us just for soup.”
The San Francisco Soup Company decided to do a test — they opened up one location and switched the name to Ladle & Leaf.
From just a name change and a slightly different menu, sales jumped immediately. People saw the company as having a more diverse menu and came for soups, salads and sandwiches. It balanced out the winter and the summer sales, and Sarver saw a constant increase in sales year-round.
Caryn McDowell, a customer of The San Francisco Soup Company and Ladle & Leaf for more than ten years, says that her favorite menu items are the “New England Clam Chowder” and the “Braised Coconut Pork with Lentils.” Other customer favorites on the diverse menu are “Grandma Mary’s Chicken Soup,” the “Hummus Lavash” sandwich and the “Asian Chicken” salad.
Over the past eight years, the restaurant chain has worked on rebranding all its locations through menu and name changes. At the start of 2020, there were only two remaining locations still known as The San Francisco Soup Company — and they were about to make the change to Ladle & Leaf.
Then the pandemic hit.
When COVID-19 came to San Francisco, the city became a ghost town as people started working from home. As most of Ladle & Leaf’s customers were office workers in the Financial District who wanted a quick, healthy lunch during their half-hour break, sales went down. They had to close most of their restaurants, and the ones that were reopened suffered from insufficient sales. Ladle & Leaf was losing money by staying open and it was financially devastating.
Currently, Ladle & Leaf has three out of their 13 restaurants in the Bay Area open. One of these locations is in the San Francisco International Airport, which has recently been reopened and is making a profit as travel has started to pick up again.
The biggest question was how the company was going to continue making money with ten restaurants shut down. They tried using DoorDash and other third-party delivery services but found that during the pandemic people were more interested in traditional ordering-in food like pizza and hamburgers, rather than soups and salads which they could make at home.
Sarver decided that if people weren’t going to go out to get their food, they would bring it to them. They started doing neighborhood pickups in order to keep their staff working and their customers ordering food. Customers can now order food online in advance and pick it up at one of the locations that are all around the Bay Area. Pickup locations include Peninsula Temple Beth El and Borel Middle School (San Mateo), at sites in Los Altos, Palo Alto, SF Financial District, San Carlos, Burlingame and at the Mill Valley Community Center.
Ladle & Leaf also provides a service for donations from customers that funds their initiative to make soup for organizations like Jewish Family and Children’s Services and St. Anthony’s.
McDowell explained that as a customer she loves the rebranded Ladle & Leaf and hopes it will stay in business during such a difficult time for restaurant companies. “I know the owners personally, and I know that they are invested in the community, involved with developing the menu and making sure people get their deliveries,” McDowell said. “And I would just emphasize, really the personal nature of it. It’s not just a business to them, it’s really being part of the community and making sure that the community is getting healthy, wholesome food during a tragic time.”
Sarver said that as restaurant owners during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have had to get creative and provide their services through unconventional and new ways.
This included tweaking the menu to fit customers’ needs during the pandemic. At the very beginning of the pandemic, when they began offering neighborhood pickup, there was simultaneously a big scare over the shortage of toilet paper. They realized that as a business with a supplier, they had access to something that a lot of people were unable to find in stores. “Our supplier was able to get us large cases of toilet paper. They had plenty in stock so we advertised it on our website.” Sarver said. “Our customers are just really happy to get things like toilet paper from us. It’s quite popular — 96 rolls of industrial-sized toilet paper.”
McDowell said that an aspect of Ladle & Leaf she loves is their effort to get feedback and to adapt their menu to cater to what the community needs. She notes that when the pandemic first started, not only were the shelves in grocery stores devoid of toilet paper, they were also bare of onions, potatoes and other goods. “There was a huge issue with access to food, so Ladle & Leaf had a weekly grocery box that you could get. You could buy yeast, flour, milk, eggs, and toilet paper,” McDowell said.
The new neighborhood pickup has expanded the restaurant’s scope — they now offer catering for holiday meals. Ladle & Leaf offered Jewish holiday dinners for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as Thanksgiving dinners for two and families of five. Because of the pandemic, people were having Thanksgiving with small groups or immediate family and were less inclined to do the cooking themselves. Ladle & Leaf knew that there would be a need for catered meals, so they provided that service. The restaurant served over 250 families all over the Peninsula through pickups and deliveries.
Right now the future is uncertain for restaurants during the pandemic. Ladle & Leaf has plans for December to do larger Hanukkah and Christmas dinners which can be purchased on their website and picked up at a neighborhood location or delivered. Some of the more than 75 items that are offered for the Hanukkah dinner include Potato Latkes, Kugel, Chicken or Brisket and Matzoh Ball soup. The Christmas menu is still being finalized.
“I think for us there’s a lot of uncertainty, we’re not expecting our restaurants to come back until at least next summer, but we really don’t know. So we just try to cut back on expenses as much as we can and make some income so that we can survive until it’s safe for people to get back to work and dine in person,” Sarver said.
