Rive 37

French Specialty Coffee. Designed in California.

Rive / 001 — San Francisco

Aujourd'hui

Reading the week.

RIVE / 001

Get directions The whole week
    Schematic plan of the six weekly stops across San Francisco.
    Schematic, not to scale — the six stops in the order we drive them.

    La carte

    Six things,
    done completely.

    A short counter on purpose. Filter and espresso from a rotating set of lots, two pastries laminated the night before. Prices are what they are; nothing is upsold.

    Every coffee gets the same sheet: producer, altitude, process, our recipe, and the price we paid for the lot. The lots below are the ones we are opening with.

    • A glass carafe of filter coffee beside a handleless bottle-green stoneware cup on the walnut counter.

      First Light

      $6

      Rive / 37 — 001 · Filter, V60

      Gedeb, Yirgacheffe. Bergamot, white peach, jasmine. Cut for clarity, for the hour before the fog decides.

    • A handleless bottle-green stoneware tumbler of espresso with a dense hazelnut crema, on the walnut counter.

      Pacific Blend

      $5

      Rive / House · Espresso, 18g / 40g

      Huila and Kirinyaga. Cocoa nib, red plum, brown butter. Built to hold its shape in milk and stay legible black.

    • A wide handleless bottle-green stoneware cup holding a cappuccino with a clean rosetta of latte art.

      Café Crème

      $5

      Rive / House · Six ounces, no more

      The French size, not the American one. Enough milk to round the edge, not enough to hide the coffee.

    • A heavy thick-walled glass tumbler of iced coffee over clear ice, milk still settling through it in strata.

      Traverse

      $6

      Rive / 002 · Over clear ice

      Nariño, washed. Green apple, cane sugar, almond. A crossing between two rooms — light enough to travel.

    • An all-butter croissant with a deeply laminated crust on a small ceramic plate.

      Croissant

      $4

      Rive / Boulange · Laminated overnight

      Normandy AOP butter, a slow cold prove, baked at six. Sold until they are gone, which is usually before ten.

    • Three caramelised canelés with dark lacquered crusts on a small ceramic plate.

      Canelés

      $5

      Rive / Boulange · Three per order

      Copper moulds, beeswax, two days of rest. Dark and lacquered outside, barely set within.

    Les fondateurs

    Two people,
    one counter.

    RIVE 37 is two of us and one truck. We found a 1960s Type H, took it apart, and put it back together around a counter. Everything else on this page — the coffee, the hours, the thirty-seven — came out of that one decision.

    We serve it ourselves. If you order at the hatch, you are ordering from the people who built it.

    Estelle & Quentin — founders

    Estelle and Quentin, the founders of RIVE 37, in bottle-green canvas aprons and ivory shirts, beside the truck on a San Francisco street.
    Beside RIVE / 001 — the morning before service

    L'objet — the object

    A vehicle that had
    to hold still first.

    RIVE / 001 is an original 1960s Type H — corrugated steel, flat glass, a body pressed the year it was pressed. Not a modern chassis dressed as an old one. It was found intact, stripped to the frame, and rebuilt panel by panel around a counter.

    Two tones, one line. Cream above, bottle green below, and a single brass rule where they meet — drawn once, then never redrawn.

    The RIVE 37 truck closed, seen square-on from its offside on a foggy San Francisco street at dawn.
    RIVE / 001 — closed, before service

    01

    La rive

    The bank of a river. The edge you stand on before you cross. Every counter we open is a threshold — street on one side, coffee on the other, and a moment in between that belongs to no one but you.

    02

    Le Pacifique

    French measure, Californian light. The gestures come from one shore, the hour and the weather from another. We roast for the fog, and for the ten minutes after it lifts.

    03

    Trente-sept

    37°N — the latitude this city sits on. And thirty-seven minutes: the pause you are allowed to claim out loud. Take a cup, take the bench, take your thirty-seven.

    The rear doors of the truck in ivory cream, marked RIVE / 001, with two brass handles.
    The plate — one truck, numbered before there were two
    Extreme close-up of the brass pinstripe where the cream paint meets the bottle-green corrugated steel.
    The rule — one millimetre of brass, used once

    La planche

    Six components, drawn to one scale. Everything here lifts away except one thing — the brass rule the whole vehicle is set out from.

    Exploded technical plate of RIVE / 001: roof, body shell, counter and espresso machine, the brass rule, the corrugated flank, and the chassis with its wheels.
    1. 01 Le toit Tôle emboutie, une seule pièce
    2. 02 La coque Ivoire mat · RAL 1013
    3. 03 Le comptoir Noyer huilé · 2,40 m
    4. 04 Le liseré Laiton poli · 1 mm
    5. 05 Le flanc ondulé Vert bouteille · RAL 6004
    6. 06 Roues et châssis Jantes noires · 16 pouces

    Une seule ligne de laiton.One brass line, drawn once.

    L'atelier

    A morning,
    in pieces.

    Twelve fragments of one week. The queue, the tamp, the spill, the dog who comes anyway, and the truck in every light it gets. Nothing here is arranged for the photograph.

    • A short queue waiting at the raised hatch in the morning fog. 7 h 10 · Hayes Valley
    • Extreme close-up of the brass pinstripe on the corrugated green flank. Un millimètre de laiton
    • An open hessian sack of green unroasted coffee with a steel scoop. Le vert, avant
    • A barista's hands tamping ground coffee into a chrome portafilter. Le tassage
    • Two hands meeting over the counter as a green stoneware cup changes hands. Le passage
    • The counter after the rush: spent puck, spilled grounds, three empty cups. Après le coup de feu
    • Someone sitting alone on a kerb with a cup, the truck small behind them. Trente-sept minutes
    • A pale cream golden retriever sitting on the pavement beside the truck. L'habitué
    • Rain running down every corrugation of the bottle-green flank. On ouvre sous la pluie
    • The corrugations throwing short hard shadows in unfiltered noon sun. Midi, lumière dure
    • The hatch lowered and the bulbs off at dusk, the pavement swept. La fermeture
    • The engraved plate reading RIVE / 001 across the ivory rear doors. Rive / 001

    Le rituel du matin

    Ninety seconds
    that are yours.

    1. i

      You find the truck by its light before you find it by its shape — one string of warm bulbs under a raised hatch, on a street that is otherwise still grey.

    2. ii

      You order in whichever language arrives first. Nobody corrects your French. Nobody hurries your English.

    3. iii

      The grinder, the tamp, the lock of the portafilter. Twenty-seven seconds of extraction that cannot be shortened and are not worth shortening.

    4. iv

      The cup crosses the walnut. From here the morning is a different shape, and the thirty-seven has already begun.

    A barista's hands tamping ground coffee into a chrome portafilter under a brass pendant lamp.
    Espresso falling from a bottomless portafilter into a bottle-green stoneware tumbler, backlit against the open service hatch.

    Trente-sept

    Take the pause,
    out loud.

    37°N is where this city sits. Thirty-seven minutes is what we think a morning owes you before it starts asking for things. Start it here and the site will hold still for exactly that long — no counter, no menu, nothing to read. Close the tab if you like; it keeps its own time.

    La course du soleil

    Where the light is,
    right now.

    Reading the sky over San Francisco.

    San Francisco · 37.77° N, 122.42° W · — local. The counter opens with the light and closes well before it goes.

    Où nous trouver

    One truck.
    Seven mornings.

    RIVE / 001 keeps a fixed week so you never have to guess. Weather moves us occasionally; the schedule below is where we intend to be.

    The week we are building toward. Each stop is confirmed with the city before we open.

    The stop of the day goes up every morning at six on Instagram — @rive37coffee. If a street closes or a grinder breaks, that is where you hear it first.

    Weekly schedule for RIVE / 001 (example data)
    DayStopNeighborhoodHours
    MondayRest — roast day—Closed
    TuesdaySalesforce Park — East TerraceSoMa7:00 – 1:00 PM
    WednesdayJackson Square — Gold StreetFinancial District7:30 – 1:30 PM
    ThursdayFerry Building — Plaza NorthEmbarcadero7:00 – 12:30 PM
    FridayPatricia's GreenHayes Valley8:00 – 2:00 PM
    SaturdayPresidio — Main Parade LawnPresidio9:00 AM – 3:00 PM
    SundayFort Mason — Pier 2Marina9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
    The RIVE 37 truck open and serving on a foggy San Francisco street corner, a short queue waiting.
    Friday — Patricia's Green, Hayes Valley

    Trois engagements

    Before anyone has
    tasted anything.

    We have no reviews yet, and we are not going to write ourselves any. Here is what we are promising instead — you can hold us to all three from the first morning.

    • 01

      We publish what we pay.

      Every lot carries the price we paid the producer, on the same sheet as the price you pay. When the two numbers sit next to each other, there is nowhere to hide.

    • 02

      The same week, every week.

      Seven fixed stops. Fog does not move us. If anything else does — a closed street, a broken grinder — it is posted before six in the morning, not at eight.

    • 03

      Six things, done completely.

      A short counter is the promise, not a limitation. Nothing is upsold, nothing is hurried, and the shot takes the twenty-seven seconds it takes.

    • PaiementCards and cash. No minimum.
    • MétéoWe open in the fog and in the rain.
    • AttenteA few minutes at the peak. We will not rush the shot.
    • AccèsServed at street level, no step up to the counter.
    The RIVE 37 truck open after dark, its string of warm bulbs the brightest thing on the street.

    Privatisation

    Bring the counter
    to your morning.

    The truck travels. Team mornings, openings, weddings, launches — we park, raise the hatch, and serve for as long as the light holds. From $850 for a morning service.

    Indicative — the quote follows the guest count and the hours.

    Book RIVE 37 for a private event

    We use what you send here only to answer your enquiry. How we handle it.

    Rejoindre la liste

    Find your 37.

    One truck today, a second counter and our own roastery next. Leave an address and we will write once — the morning we open, with where to stand.

    We write once, the morning we open. Nothing else, ever. How we handle it.