Live music performed at popular coffee shop
Published in the July 6 – 19, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
CLICK HERE TO SEE BUSINESS PROFILE VIDEO OF GVA CAFE
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Marty Cheek
GVA Cafe owner Renee Carrillo in the music lounge that will double as a gallery for local artists to display works.
When it opened four years ago, Grinds, Vines and Automobilia Cafe customers could get coffee and a few drinks. The downtown coffee house slowly added gelato, breakfast and lunch options, desserts, beer and wine, catering services and expanded the music lounge. Now GVA Cafe is adding an art gallery, absorbing the Morgan Hill Art Gallery, which was going to close after nine years in the community.
“The art gallery is going to complement GVA,” said Renee Carrillo, the cafe’s owner. “We have a great space and the walls needed some character and when I found out the gallery was going to close I had to reach out and bring it under the GVA dream and make it a great place for the community.”
Art work should be hanging on the walls of the lounge very soon, she said. It’ll add another element to the customer experience, something Carrillo said is the essence of the cafe.
“You are coming to a place where it’s your local coffee shop with great products, good service and the feeling you’re at home,” she said. “It’s an experience from enjoying good food, a glass of wine or beer while listening to live music.”
The Wednesday night Chris and Friends open mic has become increasingly popular, with musicians coming from around the region to play.
Live music was being played usually by a solo guitarist when Carrillo took over. So she moved into the vacated The Candy Parlour when they moved across the street and has continued to grow. In addition to the open mic night, live music is performed Friday and Saturday nights as well.
“We just decided to go with what the public wanted and here we are,” Carrillo said with a pleased grin.
Born in Mexico, Carrillo arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 5. After graduating high school as a stellar student, she found she couldn’t go to college because she wasn’t an American citizen. “I didn’t have a Social Security number,” she said. “I was recruited by USC, UCLA and others but I didn’t exist.”
But fortune was on her side as then-President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1986 that gave any immigrant who entered the country illegally amnesty.
“In 1987, I became legal,” the entrepreneur said.
She attended East Los Angeles College and graduated with an Associate of Arts degree in art. Carrillo was going to continue studying electrical engineering, but yearned to make money. So she dropped out of college and got a job waiting tables at the same restaurant her grandfather worked.
She then worked a small cafe for about nine years, and helped it grow, learning business skills along the way. She was recruited by London Fog as a store manager in Los Angeles and eventually moved up to district manager overseeing 17 stores in California.
“I was making money and life was great,” she said. She was promoted to the Bay Area at the height of the Silicon Valley boom in late the 1990s, managing Factory Outlet Stores, which are driven primarily by tourism. Then Sept. 11, 2001 hit, hurting the economy, especially travel. Shortly after her position was eliminated.
While living in Morgan Hill, she’d drive through the downtown, hoping some day she could own a business there.
“When the coffee shop became available, I said ‘this is my shop,’” she said. “I was raising my daughter (Sammy, now 23) and decided this is where I wanted to settle down.”
