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Nestled among the redwoods with a population of around 200 people, Loma Mar feels far removed from Silicon Valley. Part of the unincorporated San Mateo County coast, it’s a census-designated place rather than a town, which means it lacks some of the municipal services and resources found in more populous areas. Self-sufficiency is part of the appeal of living in Loma Mar and at the same time a skill that comes in handy when heavy rain or high winds lead to power outages and downed trees blocking roadways.
In a community as small as Loma Mar, self-sufficiency means relying on yourself as well as your neighbors to sustain a more rural way of life. And for nearly a century, generations of residents who call themselves Loma Martians have relied on an outpost that serves as a gathering place as well as a critical resource for food, communication and information.
Widely known as the Loma Mar Store & Kitchen, it’s the site of the only store in Loma Mar and has been home to the community’s lone post office, gas station, restaurant and volunteer fire department over the years. Originally a lumber mill, it later transitioned into a post office and added a general store in the 1950s. Former owner Roger Siebecker started a dinner club inside the store in the 1970s called the Blue Eyed Goose, and the store was also once home to the Dancing Dog Diner.
In 2014, Loma Mar residents Jeff and Kate Haas bought the Loma Mar Store & Kitchen from previous owner Beth Williford and soon got to work on major renovations that paused the store’s operations until 2019. The respite after reopening was brief – first came the pandemic, followed by the CZU Fire forcing residents to evacuate.
Through it all, the Loma Mar Store & Kitchen has stood the test of time as a South Coast hub, a symbol of the community’s resilience with its own transformations and adaptations throughout its nearly 100-year existence.
That mission has inspired the business’ next chapter — a transition to nonprofit status along with a new name, Loma Mar Outpost, and new faces leading the charge. In a letter posted online, Jeff and Kate Haas announced that the Loma Mar Store was “transitioning from a husband-and-wife-owned, for-profit business into a community-driven, board-led project called the Loma Mar Outpost.”
“I think it was the right time for Jeff and I,” Kate Haas said. “We had done something we were very proud of, and we wanted to see it continue. We saw the opportunity for this to be a community hub.”
While nonprofit cafes are common in Great Britain, nonprofit eateries are harder to find in the United States. Bay Area examples with similarities to Loma Mar Outpost include Ada’s Cafe in Palo Alto, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that hires and trains employees with disabilities, and San Francisco’s Delancey Street Restaurant, a full-service training school that’s part of the Delancey Street Foundation.
The couple’s original intention had been to run Loma Mar Store & Kitchen as a nonprofit, but they were advised against it. About a year ago, they began revisiting the idea and talking to people about how it could work.
Those conversations led Jeff and Kate Haas to Janet Clark, a fellow longtime Loma Mar resident with a background in journalism, nonprofit work and marketing who has served on the Cuesta La Honda Guild board of directors and as president of the Pescadero Community Foundation.
“I think it is an amazing place that they’ve created,” Clark said. “The atmosphere inside the building – it’s just charming. It speaks to everything that we are here on the South Coast…it is nestled in the redwoods, it’s built out of redwood, it has this rich history.”
“The biggest selling feature for me was in our conversation, Kate and Jeff were talking about why they wanted to really focus on community,” she added. “They were talking about the fact that we live in a world that is increasingly digital-oriented and people, particularly since the pandemic, have had a hard time connecting, and that what we really need are places like this that will provide resources and reasons for us to connect with each other.”
Clark is now executive director of Loma Mar Outpost, which officially debuted Oct. 1 — with a power outage.
“It just demonstrated the need for a community resource hub,” she said with a laugh.
Besides Clark, Loma Mar Outpost is led by a board of directors made up of South Coast residents and a staff that includes familiar faces like kitchen manager Marcy Steiner and store manager Nichole Vroman. As a nonprofit, the business doesn’t have owners anymore, and the board operates the nonprofit, Clark explained.
The business now effectively has two sides – the operational side, which involves running the store and kitchen, and the nonprofit side that’s programming-based. Clark expects grants, donations, catering and workshop fees to help fund pay-it-forward and pay-what-you-can programs along with initiatives to boost resiliency, like getting a new generator.
“In some respects it’s like running two different sides of the same organization,” Clark said. “It’s all nonprofit – every bit of everything we make, whether it’s from grant funding or from sales at the store and restaurant, are going to support this mission of nourishing our neighbors and our neighborhoods and supporting the South Coast in general.”
Clark’s goal is to make the operations “at least self-sustaining,” but she added that Loma Mar Outpost will need outside support.
“Some of what we’re doing is trying to build supports for a community that is not super resource-rich,” Clark said.
Loma Mar Outpost will focus on four areas of programming – food, community, opportunity and resilience. The food component will center around sourcing ingredients locally, hosting regular pay-what-you-can dinners and developing a pay-it-forward program. Clark also wants to give people opportunities to build community with open mic nights, community dinners and other events.
With the opportunity focus, Clark plans to create youth programming and paid internships for South Coast adolescents, as well as economic development opportunities by partnering with and promoting nearby farms and businesses. And building resilience means developing backup systems to ensure Loma Mar Outpost is a safe place even in prolonged power outages and stocking essential supplies like batteries and propane.
While the business has a new name and business model, much of its familiar charm remains. The physical building is the same except for a new workshop space called the Coop, and the weekly specials and monthly Loma Mar Motor Gathering will continue.
“You don’t have to live here to be part of the Outpost community,” Clark said.
While the Outpost is serving a menu that’s largely the same as the Loma Mar Store & Kitchen’s, featuring items like its signature Reuben sandwich and the Pomponio Burger with beef sourced from nearby Pomponio Ranch, they’ll look to expand offerings in the future and keep within the seasonal eating model, Clark said. In the meantime, they’re beginning to serve breakfast on weekends, working to bring in more locally sourced foods and even lowering pricing on some groceries and dishes by 10%-20%.
“We’re just trying to make it make more sense for the community,” Clark said. “We’re trying to keep it at a reasonable cost but also keep the quality really high.”
With Loma Mar Outpost now in its second quarter of operations since the nonprofit transition, the restaurant has already hosted a build-your-own vision board workshop and its first quarterly pay-what-you-can dinner, a Valentine’s Day community meal with nearly 100 guests over the evening. Logistical items continue to crop up as well, and Clark appreciates that Kate and Jeff Haas have been helpful in sorting through them as the Outpost’s landlords and advisers.
The Haas’s still keep tabs on the restaurant and store’s happenings, but they’ve embraced stepping back from their former business to give the new leadership room to continue in its next stage. Jeff Haas compared stepping away from his business to sending a child off to college – “you want them to go but you don’t want them to leave,” he said – but added that it was the right move at the right time.
“We’ve made so many friends: bicycle friends and motorcycle friends and car friends and camping friends and neighbors…it’s humbling when we think about it,” he said. “With good direction, the Loma Mar Store, now the Loma Mar Outpost, is really we think doing a terrific job, and we’re very excited to see how it’s going to advocate for the South Coast communities.”
“It’s been a real privilege to be the ones clapping in the background, which is what we’re doing – celebrating them and what a good job they’re doing,” Kate Haas said.
With a future path carved out for the restaurant among the redwoods, Kate Haas said she hopes Loma Mar Outpost will inspire the creation of comparable community hubs in rural areas.
“I hope there’s more of them,” she said. “The more we can see our community hubs and these support networks in rural communities, I think this is a wonderful direction.”
Clark said it would be a success to establish something that’s a model for others to create their own outposts. In the meantime, cultivating human connection is at the forefront of her mind.
“The Outpost is surrounded by natural beauty, so the more that we can do to get people in touch with that beauty, with the connection to their food sources, with actual human connection, the better off we’re all going to be,” she said.
Loma Mar Outpost, 8150 Pescadero Creek Road, Loma Mar; 650-879-0203, Instagram: @lomamaroutpost. Open Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. To donate, visit in person or email Janet Clark, janet@lomamaroutpost.org.
