The GoodLife Cafe
A People-First Mendocino Institution
by Torrey Douglass
When I met with Teddy Winslow one morning to talk about GoodLife Cafe, her wildly successful breakfast and lunch hot spot, she had already been hard at work for hours. Her early morning had been spent investigating the best way to make hot chocolate and mochas using solid blocks of premium chocolate. Supply chain issues were making powdered cocoa hard to come by, and the cafe needed an alternative solution to keep the hot and chocolatey drinks flowing. This is a small endeavor among the multitude of tasks required to keep a business humming along, yet it embodies a few of the values that have turned GoodLife Cafe into a local institution: never skimp on quality, consistently offer a diverse and tantalizing menu, and use creativity and diligence to always deliver, regardless of the challenges involved.
The cafe sits in an enviable location, smack dab in the middle of Mendocino’s business district where there’s plenty of car and foot traffic. Folks heading up Lansing Street to pop into Mendosa’s grocery store or down it to stroll along the headlands and take in the ocean views all pass by GoodLife. Its large windows offer a clear view into the bustling interior, while coffee aromas tempt passersby inside. And once inside, I double dare you to turn around and walk out once you get a look at the glass cabinets full of freshly baked pastries, bagels, cakes, cookies, and pre-baked dishes like Korean noodles and quiche. There’s also a morning menu that offers full breakfasts like Eggs Benedict, omelettes, and waffles. The lunch menu is filled with favorites like tostadas and burritos, fresh soups and salads, and a variety of sandwiches including a classic BLT, savory portobello mushroom, or a hearty burger. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten- and dairy-free options are plentiful and clearly indicated, and the ingredients are almost all organic.
Teddy credits her success in part to what she calls her “Jewish nature.” “Feeding people makes me happy,” she said with a smile. She comes by it honestly—her Grandma was called Savta Tova, or “Grandma Good Food,” and delicious meals were the standard in the house where she grew up. While she did work at other jobs, she naturally gravitated to the hospitality industry, working as a server for different restaurants, including Queenie’s in Elk. At one point, she was asked to move from the floor to the kitchen when Queenie had to take time off due to illness, providing her first taste of professional cooking experience and allowing the restaurant to stay open during a difficult time.
After years working for others, in 2012, Teddy was ready to strike out on her own. She purchased the little coffee shop from Paul and Joan Katzeff, owners of Thanksgiving Coffee, with almost no money down. At that time, the orders averaged $4.67 and the business was in the red.
Purchasing the cafe wasn’t the only big change in Teddy’s life at that time. When the sale for the cafe went into escrow, she was also seven months pregnant. Her son spent his baby days in the bakery with her, then was sent home to be cared for by family when he began to crawl. Shepherding GoodLife into stability and profitability went hand in hand with solo parenting and learning how to be a mom. When it came to the cafe, her overriding thought was, “If I’m going to commit my life to this, I need to feed my kid from it.” As a result, the cafe serves up “real food”—non-GMO, mostly organic, lovingly prepared food to nourish and delight her customers.
Like a good mom, Teddy encourages continuous growth and improvement. The space has been expanded three times under her ownership. What used to be a funky, small front room with a tiny back kitchen now includes the entire bottom floor of the building, more than triple the original footprint. The original kitchen had one small, six-burner stovetop with her office tucked into a corner. Now there are separate stations each for making pastries, waffles, salads, and deli items, as well as the hot line for the made-to-order dishes. Employees now have a break room, and Teddy and the rest of management share an office in the back. The business has grown 20% every year—she paid off the Katzeffs by 2017—and the larger space testifies to past success while enabling continued growth in the future.
Teddy is the first to tell you she couldn’t have done it alone. The core values that are the foundation of the cafe—producing wonderful food created from the best ingredients—rest on a less visible but probably more significant value: take care of your people. “I named the business GoodLife because I want it to emulate that,” Teddy shared. “Each staff member is appreciated and matters. There’s very little turnover.”
That appreciation is backed up by real action. Teddy implemented a 15% service fee when she re-opened after the COVID shutdown, weathering some Yelp backlash to stand by her commitment to her team. She sees a direct relationship between delicious food, good service, and staff that are treated well. “People stayed because they are getting grown-up paychecks,” she explained. “I want management to treat [the business] like their own.”
Opportunity for professional growth is available to any staff who’s up for it. When Teddy first purchased the business in 2012, Beto Uluac had already been washing dishes for 5 years. He was 22 and shy, possessing little English and a rock solid work ethic. Teddy taught him the cafe’s recipes that she, in turn, had gathered from family, friends, and local professionals. Beto became a cook, then head cook, and now is the kitchen manager.
It seems like Beto has found his calling. He loves to try new things and play around with existing recipes. When he visits San Francisco, he seeks out bakeries to check out the latest creations. That’s how the cafe began making “cruffins”—a pastry that bakes croissant dough in a muffin tin with various fillings. GoodLife cruffins have included fillings like peanut butter and chocolate, raspberry custard, pumpkin spice, and dulce de leche. When reflecting on Beto’s role in the business, Teddy shared, “He’s hungry, he’s scooping up life experience. [The job] is not just a way to make rent.” Recognizing how essential Beto has been to GoodLife’s success, wheels are turning to give him a percentage of the business and make him co-owner, and later this year he plans to attend business management training as well as professional pastry training.
Ultimately, Teddy would like the business to be entirely employee-owned. In a time when businesses are losing workers like a wet dog shaking off water, her turnover has been minimal. Investing in her people keeps the quality consistently high while enabling the business to take everything to the next level. There’s nothing wrong with getting served by a teenager who has had the job for three months, but when you’re waited on by someone who’s been working at the front counter for several years, who is empowered to speak up when there is room for improvement, and can share their expertise with customers, it’s a whole different level of customer experience.
GoodLife prioritizes long term sustainability over easy-butultimately-detrimental short term solutions. “I hate waste,” confided Teddy. Leftover pastries become the next day’s bread pudding and unused vegetables are made into soup before they lose their vibrancy. An overabundance of kale led to the popular “green soup,” now a customer favorite. There are no plastic, single-use utensils on offer, and to-go boxes are compostable. Teddy is currently looking for a pig farmer who could collect her compost, which would provide a full-circle solution for the kitchen’s food scraps.
Teddy’s care for the well-being of folks is not limited to her staff, but extends out into the community. These local ties have been essential to GoodLife’s survival during the pandemic. The kitchen buys produce from farms like Fortunate Farm, Nye Ranch, Big Mesa Farm, and Green Rainbow Farm. Besides serving as a retail space for merchandise like hats, bags, and mugs, the front doubles as a local art gallery, providing a generous 70% payout to artists. And of course there is the coffee, which has always been local. For years, the cafe’s coffee and espresso were all provided by its original owner, Thanksgiving Coffee. Then, last year, Teddy switched over to another excellent Mendocino County brand. Black Oak Coffee now supplies the cafe with coffee sustainably grown by a women-owned business in El Salvador.
Teddy measures her time at GoodLife by her son’s age, since they both entered her life at the same time. An only child, the cafe provides him with a larger family as well as a connection to the community. When he was younger, he would stand by the door and hand out menus. Teddy expects him to start wiping tables and bussing next year. Until he’s ready for that, he volunteers at the Fort Bragg Food Bank, as she thinks it’s important for him to be exposed to the food insecurity some people experience. “Everything we make is so fresh, there aren’t lots of leftovers to give them,” Teddy said with regret. Still, volunteerism can inspire compassion, motivate good works, and help him appreciate the GoodLife he’s been lucky enough to grow alongside.
Good Life Cafe & Bakery
10483 Lansing St, Mendocino, CA 95460
(707) 937-0836 | GoodLifeCafeMendo.com
Open daily 8am - 3pm
Torrey Douglass is a web and graphic designer living in Boonville with her family. Her life’s joys include reading by the fire, cooking something delicious, and inspiring her dogs to jump into the air with uncontained canine happiness.