Painted Leopard Coffee Opens First Permanent Café Inside San Francisco Luxury Resale Store

Painted Leopard, the Bay Area's sole El Salvador-only specialty roaster, planted its first permanent flag inside The RealReal's Union Square flagship at 253 Post Street, ending three years of roaming pop-ups with a 1,550-square-foot café inside the luxury consignment brand's newly reopened San Francisco store.

Co-founding cousins Claudia Campos and Daniel Ortiz are both first-generation children of immigrants who fled Osicala during the Salvadoran civil war. As kids, both made regular trips back to the family's hometown on Monte Cacahuatique in Morazán, visits that now directly shape the roaster's sourcing: every bean Painted Leopard uses comes from producer members of Cooperativa San Carlos Dos, the cooperative growing coffee on the slopes around that same mountain. Co-owner Octavio Vargas handles roasting at 444 Collaborative in the East Bay, completing a farm-to-cup chain that runs entirely through Osicala. "We feel a deep personal connection to the region," Campos said. "Being able to return today through our work with coffee gives us a meaningful opportunity to reconnect with the community and contribute with a larger purpose."

The café sits within The RealReal's two-story, 8,100-square-foot Union Square store, which itself had been shuttered for nearly three years before reopening this month. The RealReal specifically sought a San Francisco- and woman-owned coffee company for its reopening, and Painted Leopard fit both criteria. The RealReal's in-house team designed the coffee space, working in natural materials, soft greens, and neutral tones alongside wood floors and open shelves to accommodate roughly two dozen guests at a time.

The current weekend menu opens with the brown sugar latte built on Painted Leopard's Dulzura beans, which carry notes of Fuji apple and cacao nib. Experimental micro-lots like Abejas, a honey-processed coffee with tamarind and wine character, signal where the menu is headed once a grand opening and full week of events roll out in early April 2026. Pour-overs, cold brew, and rotating specialty drinks are planned for that expansion, along with pastry partners not yet named. For now the café runs Saturdays and Sundays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with daily service targeted for early April as well.

Painted Leopard formally launched at the San Francisco Coffee Festival in November 2023 and built its following through pop-up stops at Presidio Tunnel Tops, Dolores Deluxe in the Mission, and Local Economy in Oakland. Campos has said the Coffee Festival was the only venue where the brand had previously shown its full coffee lineup. "We truly want to help the farmers, as they put a lot of work in," she said. "We really envision ourselves as a central hub for all coffees from El Salvador."

The permanent address gives that ambition an anchor, dropping a sourcing-focused, single-origin Salvadoran roaster into one of San Francisco's highest-traffic shopping corridors at a moment when Union Square is actively courting local businesses to complement returning global brands.