There’s an area that’s been here for 25 years, an area that’s seen all of Cupertino modernize around it — an area that’s getting left behind. And yet, in The Oaks Shopping Center on Stevens Creek Boulevard, a few businesses have found success in unique ways and grown their roots.
As you walk up to the Hobee’s front door, there’s usually someone rushing to the entrance to open it for you. Sometimes that person is manager Rekha Mayavan. On a cold Friday evening, she held the door open as a disabled patron left the store after warmly wishing her a good night. She casually confided that she gave the customer a 50 percent discount on the meal.
This scene isn’t uncommon at Hobee’s. The management knows a lot of their customers well, and some of them extremely well. Since the store’s opening in 1986, it’s had regulars coming in every week or even every day, often ordering “the usual.”
Though Sid Quezada, a student at De Anza College across the street, has only worked at Hobee’s for a
month, she already has a regular to whom she serves iced tea every night.
“Just having a couple of regular customers isn’t enough to generate the sort of constant revenue you need to keep this place open,” she said, “but the fact is, [Hobee’s] is reliable [in the community]. It’s got more of a vibe — old fashioned, I guess.”
Quezada’s mom worked at another, now defunct Hobee’s a decade ago, while studying and raising Quezada. This Hobee’s is the only franchise location left — all the other ones have gone corporate or shut down.
Aside from the family connection, the main reason Quezada went to Hobee’s and eventually applied for the job was because of its convenient location.
“[Before or after] a long day of classes, you can run in and grab something,” Quezada said. “It’s not full, except during breakfast. It seems like one of those places where if you heard about it going under, you’d think, ‘Oh no! I loved their coffee cake.’”
Hobee’s doesn’t advertise, but according to Mayavan, it’s not going out of business anytime soon. After an event at De Anza or the Flint Center, they see a surge of customers and groups. As part of its efforts to be a strong part of the community, the restaurant also donates its famous coffee cake to local events, like Memorial Park’s Veterans Day ceremony. However, that’s the extent of their high school connection. The store’s average customer is older and more traditional, someone who prefers coffee cake and iced tea to ice cream sandwiches and pearl milk tea.
According to Coffee Society barista Caleb Seaton, when he grew up in Cupertino, people went to three places: work, home and Coffee Society. It was the place where he met up with his friends before deciding what to do that day.
Now, a decade later, it’s a convenient location with competitive prices, but it’s by no means a community hub.
“There’s no real pull to this place,” he said.
However, Seaton noted that Coffee Society goes through cycles of popularity with high schoolers. For awhile, it won’t be cool. Then one student will “discover” it, their friends will start trickling in and it’ll eventually reach where it is now: most school nights, the restaurant is full of MVHS students sipping on iced cappuccinos, typing on their Macbooks.
Though the coolness cycle currently brings in customers, the business also has daily visitors due to its
proximity to De Anza. Despite the steady flow of customers, there’s a sense that the establishment is taken for granted. According to the baristas, they check the prices of all nearby coffee shops to keep theirs low, but people still complain. They also agreed that they have “the most used bathroom in Cupertino,” with people ranting on Yelp if there’s ever a line.
But not everyone is unappreciative — Harlan Graves, a De Anza student who hangs out outside Coffee Society five times a week, loves the area for its people. Graves thinks that most of his classmates come for the WiFi, but he comes for its bitter but friendly employees and his group of friends, who mock each other’s facial hair between cigarette puffs.
Other Oaks Center restaurants lack the personal connections Hobee’s and even Coffee Society have built. While these establishments have had over two decades to develop them, newer restaurants at the center have had less than two years — or even less than two months. Older restaurants can depend on a steady stream of customers to keep them afloat while newer and cooler places pop up, but their neighboring shops are not as lucky.
Thai Square and Chaat House have similar tales of turning over a new leaf. Both struggled under previous owners, with understaffing and customer service issues, until the owner gave up and sold the restaurant to a friend. Now under new management, the current owners are learning from previous mistakes.
“I hired one of the best Thai chefs from San Francisco, and now many Thai people invite their friends for lunch for authentic Thai food,” Thai Square owner and manager Boyd Sooknetr said.
The two businesses attract customers through high quality food and service, and let word of mouth do its job. Whether it’s people happy to have authentic food close to home or people eager to test out flavors, these new restaurants are rapidly growing and working hard to succeed where others have failed before.
Located next to businesses fighting to make a name for themselves, there are two big chains in the Oaks Center for whom that isn’t exactly a concern: Jamba Juice and Quickly. The restaurants draw in customers from De Anza College and nearby high schools throughout the day. Other places in the center, like Swurlz Frozen Yogurt, have to rely on advertising such as discounts and loyalty cards to gain customers, but the well known brands of Jamba Juice and Quickly are enough to keep customers coming back.
“We get all kinds of people coming in, but definitely a lot of De Anza students because it’s so close,” said Alana Harris, freshman at DeAnza and Jamba Juice employee.
For most students who spend time at the Oaks Center, its proximity trumps the wider variety of shops available at other centers in Cupertino.
“I live by Target so we go to the TJ Maxx complex,” junior Oeshi Banerjee said. “I think it’s the options that are available that makes it better [than the Oaks Center].”
Banerjee spent her Friday afternoon on Nov. 6 on a Jamba Juice run with her field hockey team, and probably wouldn’t have thought to visit the Oaks Center otherwise. For her, unless she has a reason to be there, it’s just not a place she would choose to hang out.
As Cupertino gravitates toward change, hurting parts of the Oaks in the process, the restaurants with loyal followings know that people will keep coming back for a daily latte before class, or a nightly piece of coffee cake to wrap up the day.
Story written and reported by Alina Abidi and Sanjana Murthy.
