It’s just past 10 a.m. and the smell of Folgers coffee and freshly-baked pan dulce is in the air. Lisenia Rivera is busy brewing coffee, serving pan dulce, tamales, and tea, and joking with a constant flow of the faithful clients of La Mejor Bakery at 3329 24th St., near Bartlett Street.
Rivera has worked here for 17 years and, for the most part, the customers know her by name.
“Buenos dias,” calls Rivera as a customer walks in. “Lo mismo de siempre?” The same as always?
“Pues ya sabés,” replies the customer. You already know.
“First of all, I’m the customer’s friend,” says Rivera in Spanish. “They’ve become attached to the affection — with respect, of course — that I give them.”
The sound of ranchero music drifts in from outside, as a man in a cowboy hat walks by the store.
More and more customers arrive, and Rivera starts their orders as soon as she recognizes them. A man walks in drunkenly, and Rivera immediately pours him a cup of coffee.
“Por borracho,” says Rivera, handing him the cup. For being drunk.
Rivera manages the whole store with the precision of a surgeon. She laughs loudly as she walks back and forth from the kitchen transporting fresh conchas, cochinitos, bread pudding and cookies.
On the wall behind her, photos of the last three mayors posing with the bakery’s owner, Carmen Elias, fog up with steam from the coffee machine. A mural above the window displays a variety of pastries with the text “exquisite & delicious cookies.”
The five or so tables in La Mejor are almost always occupied, as many Latino seniors catch up with friends or read the latest issue of El Tecolote or El Reportero.
Before Rivera ever worked at La Mejor, she was a regular customer there. The bakery was her usual spot for pan dulce and coffee on her way to BART for her job at a taqueria near downtown.
In 2009, Rivera had just had a baby, and was living around the corner. When a position opened as cashier, La Mejor’s employees encouraged Rivera to apply. After one interview, she was hired.
Rivera grew up in San Joaquin, a small village in the state of Jutiapa in southern Guatemala. She, her siblings and cousins were raised by her grandparents, Juan Argueta and Erlinda Rivera, after her parents migrated to the United States when she was five-years-old.
Rivera remembers a happy childhood, helping her grandmother get the masa for tortillas ready early each morning and playing with dolls that she and the other children made out of corn husks and clay. The family was poor, and their diet mostly consisted of beans, eggs, cheese, tortillas and avocados. Sometimes, when resources were limited, the family would only eat beans.
Rivera says that she used to lie in the open field with her grandfather looking at the stars, hearing his stories about a giant snake that lived in the nearby Lake Guija that ate goats and cows.
“I asked my grandpa why it didn’t eat people and he’d tell me that God hadn’t given it the freedom to eat people,” says Rivera with a slight smile.
“We’d fall asleep listening to my grandpa’s stories.”
Rivera’s mom returned from the United States when Rivera was 10. Five years later, it was Rivera who embarked on her own journey alone to El Norte. She arrived in Richmond, Calif. in October 2002 and worked at a winery, a carwash and as a nanny, before deciding to move to San Francisco.
She quickly found a job as a server at Acajutla, a Guatemalan restaurant at 19th and Mission streets, and rented a room for $350 near 26th and Mission streets.
Rivera got married, and had her daughter in 2009. She moved to a studio apartment at 24th and Bartlett streets, just around the corner from La Mejor.
Nearly 18 years later, on a recent Thursday, Rivera reflected on what the bakery has given her: friends, community, a good boss, a chance to meet the last three San Francisco mayors — and her second husband.
“He used to be a customer here. We’d always chat whenever he came by,” says Rivera.
Rivera asked him out and they went to Ocean Beach on their first date, walking through the ruins of the Sutro Baths, and watching the sunset.
Today, they live near 24th and Noe streets with Rivera’s daughter and two kids of their own.
“I’m happy and grateful,” says Rivera. “I really like my job.”
