Welcome to Lily Belli on Food, a weekly food-focused newsletter from Lookout’s food and drink correspondent, Lily Belli. Keep reading for the latest local food news for Santa Cruz County – plus a few fun odds and ends from my own life and around the web.
… The shiny black coffee cart that opened at the end of October outside of Simpkins Family Swim Center in Live Oak isn’t your typical place to grab a post-swim carrot cake muffin and a chai. Occupational therapist Molly Turner founded Skills of Life Café to empower individuals with special needs. The café, which operates as a nonprofit, offers job training to neurodivergent teens and young adults with conditions like autism and Down syndrome who need minimal assistance and would like to be more independent.
The café, which operates Wednesday through Sunday, aims to help those who would like to enter the workforce, but need to build necessary skills in a low-stakes environment.
“The goal of this is to target those that typically would fall between the cracks, and would be disregarded when they really want to get a job out there,” Turner told me. “It’s very safe and slow. They have me constantly saying that it’s OK to make mistakes. That’s the beauty of this. It’s a real café, but they have the opportunity to learn.” Read the story here.
… Santa Cruz-based Venus Spirits and other California craft distillers have called upon state Sen. John Laird to help pass legislation that would make temporary pandemic-era rules around shipping their beverages directly to consumers permanent. The relaxed rules are set to expire at the end of this year, but the lawmaker said a host of challenges would likely make it difficult to build political support to extend them. Read the story from Lookout business correspondent Jessica M. Pasko.
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… I want to give a shoutout to a few Santa Cruz County food businesses that are raising money locally for victims of the Los Angeles fires:
Westside wine bar Apéro Club is collecting donations, including new sheets, baby items and hygiene products through Wednesday evening. A post on Instagram notes that Aran Healy, who owns Apéro Club with his wife, Hannah Healy, lost his childhood home in the Mendocino Complex fire in 2017. “We know this pain well,” the post says.
This Sunday, pop-up Pogonip Pizza is hosting an event at Woodhouse Blending & Brewing in Santa Cruz from 2 to 7 p.m. All of the proceeds will go to three Los Angeles-based entities and friends of Pogonip Pizza: Side Pie, an Altadena restaurant that burned down; Urban Homestead, a family farm in Pasadena impacted by the fires; and Slice Out Hunger, a nonprofit providing pizza to hungry families during fire relief. View the menu on Instagram.
Fika Bakeshop, a pop-up bakery in Ben Lomond, will donate 20% of proceeds from boxes of Swedish baked goods to World Central Kitchen, an international nonprofit organization that offers free meals to victims of disasters. The boxes are $30 and include Swedish treats like cardamom buns and lingonberry semlor buns. Pre-orders can be placed through fikabakeshopbenlomond.com. More info on Instagram.
And although it’s over now, it’s worth noting that on Monday, Pretty Good Advice restaurant donated 10% of proceeds from both the Soquel and downtown Santa Cruz locations to victims of the Los Angeles fires.
Do you know of other fundraising opportunities at food and drink businesses in Santa Cruz County? Email me at lily@lookoutlocal.com or text me.
… One of my favorite pizza spots is preparing to open a second location in Watsonville. At Slice Project’s original restaurant on Main Street in downtown Watsonville, brothers Brando and Kristian Sencion sell authentic New York-style and Detroit-style pizza. Soon, they’ll open a new spot in the Hangar on Aviation Way in Watsonville, joining a cohort of other locally owned food and drink businesses like Beer Mule and Honeylux Coffee. Slice Project is going into the former ScoopDog spot, which closed last fall.
All of their pizza options, including whole pies, slices and Detroit squares, will be available at the new location, Slice Project announced on Instagram over the weekend. The pizzas will be made on site. They’re aiming to open in February, but don’t have an official date set, Brando told me on Tuesday.
They’ve been looking for a second location on and off for a few years, Brando said. When the spot opened up in the Hangar, they thought it would be a good fit because it’s a popular destination for locals.
“The Hangar is really active, and we thought it would be a good spot to sell pizza,” said Brando. “We know it’s in the same town, but Watsonville is pretty split with traffic and convenience. Being in the north and south of the city, we thought it would be easier for folks from Corralitos and Aptos to pick up pie.”
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Adriana Owsley worked at the legendary Linda’s Seabreeze Café in Santa Cruz for 28 years. In this sweet story for Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section, she offers a tribute to the little Seabright restaurant and to the kind-hearted ownership style of Tex and Claire Hintze, who recently sold the cafe to veteran restauranteurs Marcie Bei Magdaleno and her husband, Mark Magdaleno. Owsley shares Linda’s hometown charm and reminds us why local loyalty goes beyond the pull of Tex’s famous cinnamon rolls. Read it here.
NOTED
2,160 – The number of eggs Gayle’s Bakery & Rosticceria in Capitola goes through in a day. Gayle’s is one of dozens of Santa Cruz County businesses that claimed to be unaffected by the national egg shortage because they source from Glaum Egg Ranch, a family-owned egg producer in Aptos. Read the story here.
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust released its 2025 lineup of the Get Hooked dinner series, which spans Monterey Bay from Santa Cruz to Carmel between January and October. The first dinner in Santa Cruz County is coming up on Feb. 25 at Hook & Line in Santa Cruz. These elegant dinners highlight seafood from local fishers, and proceeds benefit MBFT, a nonprofit organization that supports Monterey Bay’s ocean economy and equitable distribution of and access to fish. Tickets are $100 per person for four courses. Info here.
LIFE WITH THE BELLIS
This week has been all about emotional and physical fortitude as my family battles yet another bout of winter illness. Any other parents out there on a revolving door of sicknesses? If you’re out there, the Belli family is in the same boat. As my husband, Mike, and I struggle to balance work, multiple nights of disrupted sleep and the needs of a feverish toddler, our days are filled with comfort foods: homemade chicken stock, pasta with butter and Parmesan, pumpkin pancakes and, if they’re up for it, big bowls of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup in the afternoon to keep everyone’s spirits up (and Marco’s temperature down). Next week will be better, I tell myself, as I wash a multivitamin down with a strong cup of coffee.
FOOD NEWS WORTH READING
➤ Starbucks has reversed the open-door policy it enacted in 2018. Now, customers must make a purchase in order to hang out and use the restroom. The new rules are designed to help prioritize paying customers, said new CEO Brian Niccol, and make Starbucks an “inviting place to linger.” (CBS News)
➤ We’ve all driven past it, and probably stopped in a time or two: The Taco Bell Cantina in Pacifica, nicknamed the “nicest Taco Bell in the world” due to its beachside location, is closed temporarily in order to become even nicer. As of Jan. 5, the spot is closed for a two-week remodel for necessary updates. (Eater SF)