How This Couple Built a Cleaning Company That Supports Some of San Francisco’s Favorite Restaurants

Because the solar spreads onto 18th Avenue within the Mission District, it’s not unusual to see Rafael Garcia juicing grapefruits within the Tartine Bakery kitchen, and, because the moon rises that very same night, it’s not unusual to see him bringing a energy washer into one of greater than a dozen eating places within the metropolis. He’s recognizable by his iconic look: diamond earrings on both facet of his chinstrap beard, a smile so joyous it forces his eyes to squint. However few common prospects, and even fellow employees, notice Garcia has a strong cleansing enterprise that works primarily with eating places in San Francisco and Oakland. His shopper checklist, now at 14, contains some of the Bay Space’s buzziest and greatest eating places: Frances, Octavia, Wahpepah’s Kitchen, Understory, and Reem’s.

Rafael Garcia, who works as an assistant common supervisor at Tartine, started his tenure on the bakery on Guerrero Avenue after working as a janitor at a sausage firm in San Francisco. It was 2011 and, whereas the cleansing job was enjoyable, he wished to achieve a new set of abilities. He began working entrance of home on the bakery, stocking cups and doling out croissants. “At the moment, my English was not so good,” Garcia says. “I needed to be taught to speak with different folks outdoors of Spanish.”

As he put in his six-odd years of working at Tartine, his spouse Rosa Lopez was gaining abilities in residential cleansing. It was her thought to launch Lopez Cleaning Companies in 2017 when she determined to launch her personal home cleansing enterprise. Tartine was searching for a new cleansing contract on the time, and he recommended they begin there. “5 or 6 months later, they seen it was trying good,” Garcia says. “In order that they invited me to wash the Manufactory when it opened.” Very quickly, he was chargeable for each companies, the commissary kitchen, and the ninth Avenue Tartine location when it opened — to not point out the gigs at prospects’ houses that his associate, in life and enterprise, was additionally taking up.

If there’s a textbook instance of the facility of word-of-mouth group, it’s Garcia and Lopez Cleaning Companies. Briefly order he picked up contracts at Smallworks, a framing store, and Mr. Muggle’s, a pet-sitting service, each of that are in the identical Mission District milieu as Tartine — geographically and socially. When Nick Beitcher, proprietor of Midnite Bagel, went out on his personal, he requested Garcia to wash his commissary house within the Dogpatch. Lopez Cleaning Companies will deal with the brand new retail location within the Inside Sundown, too.

“Rafa was the man,” Beitcher says. “He knew each nook and cranny of the [Tartine] house and will do something — tools to repair, recipes that wanted to be translated to Spanish, he was simply the man.” He’d watch Garcia go from a full shift on the bakery to a cleansing job that wouldn’t finish till three within the morning, and he says he’s blown away by Garcia’s work ethic. “He’s an insanely laborious employee,” Beitcher says. “There’s by no means any doubt he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do.” Garcia is sheepish, however acknowledges it’s been these variety of private opinions which have allowed his enterprise to flourish.

Rafael Garcia

Rafael Garcia

The work does add up. Garcia says he and his spouse adore it — the hustle and grind — and actually loves having purchasers and prospects from each his enterprise and his job at Tartine. Organizing his life, although, and feeling a sense of management is a most important motivation. “We wished to have our personal time, our personal schedule, and likewise for positive to make more cash,” Garcia says. “To be free. Not dwelling month to month.”

It’s been a laborious time for Tartine. However not so for Garcia, although he did lose about 40 p.c of his purchasers within the first 12 months of the pandemic. The cleansing firm has two rotating workers now, and he simply added carpet cleansing and shifting providers to his choices. There’s no restrict in sight, he says. “Me and my spouse, we’re rising collectively,” Garcia says. “I can not know, however I wish to make everyone blissful. When you have a new alternative, you must take it.”