Beloved Tech Hangout Caffe Centro Closes Amid San Francisco’s Tepid Recovery

San Francisco’s slow-paced recovery from covid has claimed another victim: Caffe Centro, a decades-old coffee shop that was a beloved haunt for the city’s technorati.

The South Park cafe never rebounded from the Covid-related lockdowns and foot traffic remains at 30% the volume before 2020, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Owner Tom Buswell said he has taken on large debt to keep the store afloat, but the decline in neighborhood activity continued to reduce revenue.

Tom Buswell has owned the store since 2013 but its origins date back to 1992 when its first owners, Max and Francesca Applegarth, sold their first coffee. Caffe Centro is a few blocks away from the original spot that gave birth to Twitter and Instagram, and it’s so popular that online grocery delivery app Instacart left a company credit card with the coffee shop.

“[Closing] was something we really didn’t want to do,” Buswell said. “We had to be at least cash positive by the end of summer if we wanted to make things work.”