Staying Power

Staying Power

The Story of Nopa and Chef Laurence Jossel

by: Cary Wong

A restaurant is a notoriously difficult business. Places open and close at the drop of the hat due to various reasons. Those who manage to stay in business, remain successful, and eventually become icons are few and far between. Chef Laurence Jossel and Nopa have undoubtedly achieved that and more.

Born in South Africa, Chef Jossel moved to the United States in 1978. Not an academically gifted person, he began cooking in San Francisco back in 1991 and has been a chef in town ever since.

When he started Nopa in 2006, it was open seven nights a week until 1 AM in addition to serving two brunches. The initial target audience was those who worked in the restaurant business—servers, bartenders, cooks, and others—who finished their shifts after 10 o’clock before visiting the establishment. At its peak, it served almost four thousand customers weekly.

As time moved forward, however, San Francisco changed. It became a much more technology-driven town and is now too expensive for restaurant people to call home. A lot of food and beverage workers moved outside of the city limits. It seemed like cooks and other industry workers had disappeared from San Francisco.

“When you have to get on a bridge and drive for a little bit, you're not going to come in and have a beer. You're going to get home,” he says. As a result, he saw a steady decline in the number of restaurant guests. So, he dialed back the hours five years ago to close at midnight during the weekend, and 1 AM for the weekends.

The pandemic, however, gave Chef Jossel a chance to completely re-evaluate the business and make some necessary changes. To him, the past year has given him a chance to be brave. Instead of perfecting a particular recipe, he was able to look at his life and determine what he wanted to do. He was able to decide what makes him happy and use that as a catalyst for change.

As a result of the soul-searching, he formed a partnership with a charity called Food Runners, which picks up excess food. That, along with other initiatives like World Central Kitchen and SF New Deal, allowed Nopa to stay open by packing $10 boxes for various shelters.

Seeing as many previous front of house staff returned to their homes outside of California or decided to leave the restaurant business, Chef Jossel was able to hire a completely new crew. He promoted people within the business and awarded those who stayed with better titles and salaries. He also earned and re-earned the support of the neighborhood since Nopa never left but continued to serve the community with their to-go boxes and to-go bags.

From a macro perspective, Chef Jossel thinks that San Francisco was a great food city before, but it is now facing some headwinds. The cost of living is so high that a lot of talented people have moved out. Other American cities now have deeper talent pools because industry workers can afford to live in those places.

For him, the key to getting San Francisco restaurants back to where they were lies in creativity and industriousness. Restaurants need to figure out how to do more with less labor and provide more inspiration for newcomers who are working their way up.

In his mind, however, there are still advantages that made San Francisco an important place to cook. The first is the presence of a knowledgeable clientele. The people coming into restaurants really know the difference between good and bad products. For example, they understand what organics mean and they know they want healthy food.

Read more at https://issuu.com/rareluxuryliving/docs/troora_san_francisco_2021_pages/96