In May, Mission Beach restaurateur Sarah Mattinson will mark another milestone, celebrating her 20th anniversary as owner-operator of Olive Cafe.

Mattinson took over the Olive Cafe at 805 Santa Clara Place from the previous owner in 2005. She ran it by herself, along with one full- and one part-time employee, for the first five years without a day off except Christmas and Thanksgiving.

In 2016, she added Olive Baking Co. at 735A Santa Clara Place across Mission Boulevard to her business mix. Today, she supplies local restaurants with pastries and sourdough bread. She also earned Restaurateur of the Year honors in 2023 from the California Restaurant Association’s San Diego Chapter for her tireless efforts as the group’s vice president.

After 20 years of working long hours with little time off and having survived a pandemic and inflation, Mattinson hasn’t lost her love for the food industry – or Mission Beach.

Not native to California, Mattinson is also not from a food-industry family. Her father was a mail carrier, and her mother also worked for the U.S. Post Office in a New York deli. “It was a tiny town and we had a full deli and they had a little spot where people could walk up and get their mailboxes and my mom would work on Saturdays there,” Mattinson said. “We would always go and visit her and I and my dad just started helping out. I fell in love with how everyone in the community would meet there in the mornings to get coffee. I always knew I wanted some sort of breakfast-lunch place.”

She then worked for a Country Club in New Jersey that, she noted, “taught me a lot of patience and customer service.” She added, “It was a great setup to work at for the hospitality business.”

Mattinson said that, in 2002, her uncle’s uncle owned a bakery in Little Italy. “He called me up and said, ‘Hey, the family needs some help, can you come help?’” After that, she said she came out, “fell in love with San Diego,” attended USD, and started working for her uncle.

Then came one of those pivotal, watershed moments in Mattinson’s life. “One of the neighbors above the bakery saw how hard I was working and she said, ‘You’re working too hard for other people, you need to do it for yourself,’” said Mattinson. “And I told her, ‘I don’t have the nest egg for a restaurant.’ She (neighbor) ended up giving me a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan, and then I found Olive, a place that was small enough that I could run it.”

Figuring out labor and food costs initially, as well as factoring in the seasonality of operating a beach business year-round, Mattinson knew she had to beef up sales and promotion for her new business in a big way to make it long-term. How did she accomplish that?

“My sister helped with the finances,” answered Mattinson. “And we stayed on top of our food costs. I would go to five different stores back then to make sure I had the most cost-effective products.”

Then Mattinson began adding community involvement and activism to her resume. “I just started getting involved in the community,” she said. “I knew the locals would be the ones who supported me through the winter. My sister always says you have to be a chipmunk and hoard that money from the summer to help make it through the winter. And for a lot of people, that’s a hard balance; they don’t realize how much of a (revenue) drop it is. That’s where your locals come in and support you and help you out.”

Mattinson has business owners come in and ask her how she makes her restaurant-bakery work during the off-season. Her reply, “You see me here. You have to be covering that labor during the slow months in the beginning to make it work.”

Asked the key to her success, Mattinson’s answer was family, noting she “always” knows she can count on their help. “I love this industry,” she concluded. “I’m more involved with the restaurant association. I love this street. I love Mission Beach. It’s a fun location.”

Of what advice she’d give to future business entrepreneurs, Mattinson counseled: “If you want to own a bar, go start working at a bar as a hostess or a dishwasher and learn (the business). I did a year as a kitchen manager, and that was one of the best preps for me: the heart of the restaurant is your kitchen. Don’t be afraid to dig through and learn finances. If you’re not strong at that, hire somebody, or get a partner who can do that. And start small so that you can operate it (business) and feel comfortable.”