San Francisco Roasting Institution Graffeo Coffee Enters New Era

At the Graffeo Coffee roastery in North Beach, San Francisco. All images courtesy of Walter Haas, Graffeo, unless otherwise noted.

San Francisco’s oldest independent coffee roaster — not to mention one of the oldest craft roasters in North America — Graffeo Coffee is under fresh ownership.

Walter Haas III — a member of the Haas family that grew Levi Strauss & Co. into a household name throughout the 20th century — purchased a majority stake in the coffee business from 81-year-old Luciano Repetto, who had been owner and primary roaster of the 90-year-old company for the past 47 years.

Haas and Repetto declined to share financial details of the acquisition beyond clarifying that Repetto remains a partner, co-owner, shareholder and owner of the Graffeo building in the “Little Italy” area of San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood.

Through the change, Graffeo will continue to offer its signature blend of coffees from Colombia, Costa Rica’s Tarrazu region and Papua New Guinea, roasted either light or dark, plus a decaf coffee. The business remains focused exclusively on roasting, with no brewed coffee service.

Luciano Repetto at the Sivetz machine.

“Luciano still roasts occasionally,” Haas recently told Daily Coffee News. “He comes in in the mornings and will roast and will run the register. At 81 years young, he’s certainly earned his retirement, but he’s a fixture here.”

The Graffeo roastery in North Beach continues to center on a custom-built fluid bed roaster using Sivetz technology. Repetto has adapted and re-tooled the roaster at least nine times over the years. The company also maintains a smaller roastery with another fluid-bed machine in San Rafael to serve customers in Marin County.

Despite his prominent position in the company — which was founded in 1935 when Italian immigrant Giovanni Graffeo opened a small grocery with roasted coffee in Little Italy — Haas is comfortable ceding the reins of the Sivetz machines.

“I need probably 30 more years to learn it,” Haas said. “Then I’ll feel comfortable.”

Haas earned a B.A. from Stanford and an M.B.A. from Harvard before moving into marketing at Levi Strauss and Enjoy Technology Inc. He has also founded companies in the IT and marketing sectors and served as a producer with Los Angeles-based Pink Slip Productions.

Haas said these experiences have helped shape how he approaches storytelling and marketing, with a specific focus on brand-building.

Walter Haas and Luciano Repetto.

“It’s been my life’s goal to build the next great American heritage brand,” Haas said. “[Brands are] very delicate things that need to be tended to, but when you get it right, you build something that enters culture and imprints into all of our lives… By being exposed to all these different great companies in various fields and working with all these amazing people, I’ve given a lot of thought to what makes a brand.”

For starters, Haas said a brand “must be rooted in a fantastic product,” which requires deep authenticity and must be unique. These are all qualities that drew him to Graffeo.

As a sixth-generation San Franciscan, Haas was already a longtime fan of Graffeo. After selling his company GIST to Northbeam, and looking for opportunities outside the tech sphere, Haas essentially cold-called his way into the world of coffee.

“The whole rest of the world was moving to technology,” said Haas. “I think as the world gets more into being AI-centric, we humans are going to require deeper connections to more authentic experiences and authentic brands and more human things.”

Now Haas is on a mission to connect Graffeo with more humans, including those beyond the Bay.

“Everyone who knows about Graffeo loves Graffeo, and everyone else has never heard of Graffeo,” said Haas. “My job is just simply to expose Graffeo to the majority of the world.”

Haas is leading a “marketing-by-exposure” effort that has included hiring Graffeo’s first-ever sales team and visiting specialty, gourmet and independent grocery stores for sampling.

Photo by Daria Toptygina.

“It’s not about changing our production or changing our beans or adding different products,” said Haas. “It is about just bringing the brand to more people and letting them fall in love.”

After 90 years, Graffeo recently celebrated its designation as a legacy business through the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission.

The next chapter of that legacy is currently being written behind closed doors.

“All I can say is we’re in the very early stages of planning for some form of coffee service in our roastery location, but it’s a bit of a secret and a surprise of what that’s gonna look like,” Haas said. “You won’t see anything soon, but that’s coming on the roadmap.”

Graffeo is located at 735 Columbus Ave in San Francisco.

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