Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...When Matthew Clark opens his pop-up coffee shop on Main Street in Los Gatos each weekend, he’s serving drinks based not only on his own travel experiences but on the taste buds of his friends and neighbors.
Clark, a Los Gatos resident of almost 15 years, established Sipbie Caffe in September 2019. Clark’s is one of just a few Black-owned businesses in town, where just 1.3% of its approximately 33,000 residents are Black.
Clark grew up in Milpitas, then moved to Chicago to work as a banker. He settled in Los Gatos in 2012 before taking a corporate job in Sunnyvale in 2016. While he says Los Gatos is a “Green Book-friendly town,” referencing the famous guidebook for African Americans traveling by car, there are echoes of racism in the town’s history.
San Jose Spotlight reported in 2024 that Los Gatos had about 130 racially restrictive covenants, which is racist language in property deeds that explicitly prevented homes from being sold to people of color. Gordon Yamate, chair of the Los Gatos Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission, said these laws are the reason why Los Gatos is one of the most segregated places in the U.S.
In spite of living in Chicago and traveling to about 50 different countries, Clark said he became “so used to” not seeing anyone like himself. But his wandering was ultimately what inspired him to break into the coffee business.
Clark’s passion for coffee was stirred far from Los Gatos. He was halfway through a latte in a cafe in Venice, Italy, and realized that it was “completely different than anything else I’d tasted at the time.” From there, he went on a six-month quest to learn about coffee.
Clark received support from his friends to start a business, and he relied on a network of neighbors and friends, who he calls his “taste buds,” to help curate the flavors on his menu.
A woman named Judy suggested during the COVID-19 pandemic that he put a lavender latte on the menu. He credits a couple who had a preference for vanilla for inspiring him to steep vanilla beans in sugar for another item. The goal, Clark said, is to “get someone to experience that moment that I experienced in their way, not in my way.”
“It is curating the drinks for others, trying to find other things, and then listening to what they say,” Clark says. “I’m realizing people just want to know what’s out there. They want to know what I’m discovering.”
After Clark launched Sipbie Caffe at the cusp of the pandemic, he said he tried to support local businesses that were struggling due to the lockdown. He said he wasn’t really looking to turn a profit, but he wanted to help showcase other businesses and bring them customers.
Clark said he serves between 20 and 25 customers per day each weekend. Now that he’s garnered enough interest, he said he’s looking to establish a physical location for his cafe. In the meantime, he’s working on expanding his arsenal of flavors, from lemon meringue to dark chocolate and orange, raspberry and pistachio. He also said he hopes to get into canning his coffees and selling them at locally owned stores. But whatever he comes up with, he said that his “taste buds” will help develop those flavors.