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Campus Life
Recognizing Business Achievement and Community Service by San Francisco Small Businesses
Congratulations to local businesses Java Beach Café and Harrington Galleries, the well-deserving recipients of the 2014 Gellert Family Business Awards, an annual event held by the Gellert Family Business Resource Center at the University of San Francisco. The awards recognize extraordinary business achievement and community service, and are made possible by a generous gift from The Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Foundation. Java Beach Café and Harrington Galleries were honored during a formal awards ceremony on Wednesday, March 21, 2014. Among those in attendance to show their support for this wonderful event were Robert Chua, District Representative for District 19, Assembly member Phil Ting, and Katy Tang, District 4 Supervisor.
Harrington Galleries received the general Gellert Family Business Award. The Mission-based business has been in the O’Connor family since 1968 and seeks to have vintage and estate furniture reused and incorporated into modern living. The O’Connor family sells re-faced antique estate items in their Mission showroom, appraises antique furniture pieces, and offers a staging service and prop rentals. They are an asset to their community and eagerly partake in local cultural efforts like the Valencia Sunday Streets. Fiona O’Connor Devereaux took over the business from her parents in 2009 and strives to uphold the integrity of the business her parents built, while staying up to date in order to complement the tremendous growth of their beloved Mission district.
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The Hospitality Award went to the Java Beach Café, an independent mom-‘n-pop type café owned by San Francisco husband and wife team Patrick and Buffy Maguire. Katy Tang, District 4 Supervisor, attended the reception to commend Jave Beach Café on its many accomplishments. The shop’s two locations bookend the boundaries of the Ocean Beach neighborhood, and “Java Beach” and “Ocean Beach” have become synonymous for many locals. The Maguires are dedicated to meticulous standards of coffee sourcing, roasting, brewing and cupping. The ever-changing Java Beach Cafe is also actively involved in countless community efforts, sponsoring an annual beach cleanup event and similar efforts in the Golden Gate Park. It has been a community favorite for over twenty years.
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The goal of USF's Gellert Family Business Resource Center is to provide family-owned businesses like Java Beach Café and Harrington Galleries with access to networking, to create an open exchange of strategic and practical family business information and advance the field of family business research, education, and scholarship. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Gellert Family Business Resources Center, founded by Dr. Eugene Muscat, who passed away in 2010.
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