Cheongs found a home at Plantation Coffee Roastery in San Carlos

In prepandemic times, they’d help her set up the tables and chairs. Some would step behind the counter to pour their own drinks and directly place money in the cash register. Others would even help take orders when the shop got particularly busy.

Since opening its doors 40 years ago, Plantation Coffee Roastery has been a fixture of the San Carlos community. Wife-and-husband duo Sue and Young Cheong, both 66, have operated the coffee shop since 2000. The couple’s son, Brian Cheong, 39, began working at the shop full time in 2017.

“I think mom really makes [the regulars] feel comfortable. There’s regulars who have been coming to this shop 20+ years,” Brian Cheong said. “There’s ladies that were pregnant when they first came, and their kids are married now.”

Bigger chains like Peet’s, Philz and Starbucks have moved into the vicinity over the years, but the coffee shop’s loyal following has remained steadfast. Brian estimates that around 80% of business comes from longtime regulars, many now seniors. That’s especially notable when you consider that the shop’s coffee offerings haven’t changed much since opening day.

There are no trendy seasonal drinks or secret menus filled with colorful, syrupy concoctions. The outside of the shop is fairly nondescript, so much so that it’s easy to miss if you don’t know what to look for.

But if you’re ever strolling along Laurel Street, you’ll smell the roastery’s secret: the earthy and rich scent of freshly roasted coffee beans wafting through the air.

In the back of the store sits a classic German-made coffee grinder and roaster that was purchased by the coffee shop’s original owner in 1981. Today, Young Cheong maintains the tradition of roasting the shop’s coffee beans every morning.

“My favorite part of working at the shop is when customers compliment the coffee that I make or roast,” Young Cheong said in Korean. Young points out that large coffee franchises typically roast their beans at factories off site and that it isn’t always clear how fresh the coffee actually is.

“Roasting on premise gives the customer confidence that we actually roasted [the beans] on this day,” Brian Cheong added. “This is fresh coffee. It wasn’t roasted two or more weeks ago.”

For longtime regulars, though, it’s always been about more than the coffee. Brian Cheong credits much of the shop’s success to his mother, who started working at the store in 1995 under the previous owner. When the owner moved to Hawaii, he asked if Sue wanted to take over.

“I was scared and intimidated because running a business is not that same as working under someone,” Sue Cheong said in Korean. “But the regulars and customers pushed for me to take over, and so that really gave me comfort and strength.”

Owning a business was beyond Sue Cheong’s wildest expectations. In 1990, the family immigrated to the United States from South Korea in search of better opportunities for their children.

“Their plan was just to put food on the table for my sister and I,” Brian Cheong said.

Young, an accountant by trade in Korea, worked odd jobs in furniture and fish stores. Sue, originally a clerk, worked two jobs to support the family. She’d leave in the early morning to work as a barista, take a short break to pick the kids up from school, then head to her second job as a server at a Korean restaurant until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.

The couple made immense sacrifices to chase the opportunity of the American Dream for their two children, Brian Cheong recalls. But if you take a look at them now, you’d be hard-pressed to say that they haven’t achieved their own American Dream.

On a regular day, you’ll see Young roasting coffee beans and brewing drinks and Brian whipping up bagels and sandwiches. Sue is usually at the counter ringing up customers and running orders — and that’s where the magic happens.

“People come here and they ask for [Sue]. When it’s just me and my dad, they sometimes just leave,” Brian Cheong said with a laugh. “She knows what they’re drinking even more than they know sometimes.”

According to Young Cheong, the shop has around 200 regular and semiregular customers whose orders Sue knows by heart. She’s even memorized the make and model of their cars in order to have their drinks ready by the time they walk in to pay.

“That’s the kind of service you don’t really see often these days,” Brian Cheong said.

When the pandemic hit, those regulars were exactly what kept Plantation Coffee Roastery afloat. Coffee sales only decreased by 25%, and regulars started tipping even more generously than before. A group of regulars even sold face masks and donated the profits to the store.

“Sue is the glue. She’s the foundation. She learns your name, your drink. She goes ‘Oh, you have a new grandson or a new baby,’” Cliff Kemper, a San Carlos resident who’s been a regular at the shop for 10 years, said. “She really wants to have a relationship with her customers, and I think that has a lot to do with why people come back.”

Kemper, 63, visits Plantation Coffee Roastery every single morning. Over the past decade, he’s become part of a tight-knit group of around 16 regulars who sit together to chat about their lives, share gossip and exchange jokes about local happenings.

Although people have come and gone and some have even died, Kemper said he’s made lifelong friends because of Plantation Coffee Roastery.

“Everybody knows each other. We have a lot of fun, and many of us see each other outside of the coffee shop,” Kemper said. “But we wouldn’t have done that had we not met each other [there].”

Brian Cheong’s own life is full of adventures. He has a master’s degree in accounting, worked as a licensed CPA and most recently worked abroad in Cambodia as an English teacher. But eventually, life drew him back to the coffee shop that he spent his adolescence in.

“When you’re young, you have ambitions to live your own life. The last place I wanted to be was the shop,” he said. “But as I’d video chat with my mom and dad, and I’d see the white, gray hair, I knew that I should help them.”

In 2017, Brian returned to the United States to work full-time at the coffee shop. His parents, of course, weren’t entirely pleased with the decision and today still urge him to return to accounting for fear of burdening him.

After a life of adventure and independence, the transition to living and working with family again as an adult certainly wasn’t easy. But Brian Cheong said the time he’s spent with his aging parents has been invaluable.

“When my sister and I were in junior high, high school, college, all they did was work. So you don’t really get to know them as individuals,” he said. “But working with them, I’ve come to know a little bit more about who they are individually rather than just as parents.”

Brian Cheong hopes to take over Plantation Coffee Roastery one day and has ambitions to modernize some of the shop’s operations. But his mom has other plans.

“I’ll never retire,” Sue Cheong said in Korean. “When I think about retiring, I’m going to cry because of not being able to see the customers.”