When Steve and Jennifer Sarver, owners of the San Francisco Soup Co., launched their first “Best Soup in San Francisco Recipe Competition” in March, they invited “Grandma Mary” Sarver to be a celebrity judge. It was the least they could do as a token of their appreciation.
After all, the recipe provided by Steve’s 89-year-old grandmother is a real winner: Grandma Mary’s Chicken Soup is one of the eatery’s most popular items.
Steve met his grandmother at the airport, and, as they waited for her luggage, they chatted about her trip from New Jersey, where she lives, and of course, they talked about soup. Suddenly, a woman at the baggage claim came up to them and said, “Are you Grandma Mary? Are you the Grandma Mary from the chicken soup?”
“It was a Grandma Mary spotting!” laughs Jennifer Sarver, who opened the first San Francisco Soup Co. restaurant on Post Street at the Crocker Galleria in February 1999.
Without a doubt, the celebrity status was real.
Today, as success grows along with the business — there are now six locations and they are opening two more: one at the San Francisco airport and the other in Palo Alto — so does Grandma Mary’s pride. She always carries a picture of Steve and Jennifer in her purse. She even gave them her chocolate cake recipe, a secret she refuses to share with any other relatives.
Jennifer< a former health-care consultant from Oklahoma, had long dreamed of owning her own business. In 1997, on vacation in Costa Rica with then-boyfriend Steve, the two brainstormed business ideas. One was to open a restaurant, which triggered Jennifer’s recollection of a “Seinfeld” character that she could not get out of her mind: The famous “Soup Nazi.”
But Jennifer is much kinder than the brusque “Seinfeld” character. Back at home in San Francisco, she began conducting street surveys about the lunch choices of downtown workers. She and Steve, who describe themselves as “culinary snobs,” experimented with more than 100 soup recipes.
Every day, their restaurants serve 12 or more gourmet soups, (which are posted daily at www.sfsoupco.com). They also cater to businesses in San Francisco and its immediate surroundings. Moreover, their soups are sold in independent grocery stores throughout Northern California. In 1999 and the 2000, San Francisco Bay Guardian named the San Francisco Soup Co. the “Bay Area’s Best Takeout.”
Today, Jennifer runs retail operations while Steve — they were married a month after the first restaurant opened — is in charge of production.
“I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else right now,” says Jennifer. “I have a wonderful family, a great business, and I live in the best city in the world.”
The couple has a 21-month-old son, Sam, whose favorite soup is potato leek. The Sarvers often take Sam to Tot Shabbat services at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, though they say they’re still “shopping synagogues.”
They’re still refining business operations as well. For example, on a recent afternoon at the Embarcadero store, the manager briefed them on the development of the new salad containers they’d begun using that day.
“These are more premium,” Jennifer says of the taller, firmer containers.
As for Grandma Mary’s Chicken Soup, which is filled with fresh carrots, celery, parsnips, onions and dill, they’ve got the recipe down pat. About 70 whole chickens go into one batch of soup. “We take the whole chicken and boil it,” Steve explains. “Then we take the meat off and boil the bones even longer. At the end, we put in fresh vegetables.”
Every Friday, customers can get Grandma Mary’s Chicken Soup with matzah balls. “A lot of customers come in and ask, ‘What’s a matzah ball?'” Steve says. “Our employees will scoop it up and show them.”
The mostly Latino workers describe matzah balls to their customers as “Jewish dumplings.” (The company used to display a little sign next to the matzah ball soup that said, “Jewish penicillin,” but the Sarvers found that the reference confused some non-Jewish customers.)
At Passover, they serve matzah. The Sarvers think theirs is the only restaurant in the Financial District to do that.
And when Grandma Mary visits the San Francisco Soup Co., she loves to discuss cooking techniques and offer up little bits of Jewish wisdom, according to her grandson.
The Sarvers pride themselves on the fact that all their soups are freshly made, and that customers with dietary restrictions — like vegetarians or those who
are lactose-intolerant — can find a soup that meets their needs. Their most popular soup is Mexican Chicken Tortilla Soup.
The Sarvers are currently perfecting their beef and cabbage soup, which they plan to soon make public.
The quality of their soups is a source of satisfaction to the Sarvers, as is the efficiency of their operations. “We’ve done lots of studies about how to best serve our customers,” Jennifer says. “We’ve designed our restaurants to be really efficient. We serve one customer every 23 seconds. That’s really important in the winter!”
Indeed, the two are a hard-working team.
“We trust each other completely and always give each other the benefit of the doubt,” says Steve, who was formerly a marketing manager at Clorox. “We love setting and achieving goals and being in charge of our own future.”