Beers, Burgers, and Baseball: How Tommy and Max Created A Sunset Destination

The Sunset is changing, and few businesses have captured the neighborhood's attention quite like Two Pitchers Brewing Company and Maillards.

In this special episode, Jessica is joined by guest co-host Ted Manahan, a Sunset resident and longtime supporter of local businesses, to sit down with Tommy Hester and Max Ponzurick, the founders behind the popular Noriega Street destination.

Together, they discuss the journeys that brought them from college baseball, homebrewing, and farmers market pop-ups to craft beer, smash burgers, and one of the most talked-about new businesses on San Francisco's west side. Tommy shares how Two Pitchers grew from a passion project into a regional brewery, while Max discusses the evolution of Maillards from a beloved Outer Sunset Farmers Market vendor to a permanent brick-and-mortar restaurant.

The conversation explores entrepreneurship, partnership, food and beverage craftsmanship, and the realities of building a business in the Bay Area. They also discuss why the Sunset was the right place to grow, how local destinations like Andytown, Devil's Teeth, Hook Fish, and Palm City helped demonstrate the neighborhood's potential, and whether the west side is experiencing a new era of investment and community-building.

If you care about local businesses, neighborhood identity, entrepreneurship, or the future of San Francisco's west side, this episode is for you.

Special thanks to Ted Manahan for joining as a guest co-host for this episode.

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The Sunset Connection — exploring the stories and histories that connect us.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet The Founders

0:04

Alright, welcome back to the Sunset Connection. I'm your host, Jessica Ho. Today we're trying something a little different. Joining me is a special co-host, Ted Manahan. Hello. A Sunset resident, father, and longtime supporter of local businesses on the West Side. Ted lives just around the corner from Two Pitchers and Mallard's. And so we've been watching as the excitement grow around a new location, and it felt like the perfect episode to co-host together. Welcome, Ted. Thanks, Justin. I appreciate you calling me special. Today we're joined by two entrepreneurs who have helped create one of the most talked-about new destinations on the west side of San Francisco, Tommy and Max from Two Pitchers and Mallard's. Tommy and Matt, welcome to the Sunset Connection. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Ted, why don't you

Two Pitchers Starts As Homebrew

1:04

kick us off? Sure, sounds good. Uh well guys, thank you very much again uh for joining. Really appreciate it. So uh I've been excited about your burgers and your two pictures for for a while, right? Like Jess was saying, I live right around the corner. I was there uh when you started at uh the farmers market, Max. And and Tommy, I know you started two pictures with your uh business partner Wilson, right, in Oakland. Right. And you guys started doing that, I think 2012. Is that when you first opened? Yeah, I think 2012 is when we started up, and um we sold our first beer in I think it was June or July 2013. So it's been like 13, 13 or so years now. So pretty crazy to think back. Yeah. And but and when did your brick and mortar open in Oakland? Uh in Oakland about four and a half years ago. Uh four and a half years? Okay. So you guys started as like at home kind of thing, right? Like you had like an incubator. Yeah, more or less. I I think uh yeah, we were um we're actually living in the uh in the inner sunset, 17th and Irving, and just kind of running stuff out of our house. Uh, and we were 22 years old, kind of figured that you know, why not give this a shot and see if it sticks? And here we are, still doing it, you know, almost 15 years later. So it's been really cool, and I think uh, you know, even better than we would have expected. So and your business, two pitchers, and there's a history of the name, right? So you are you're a baseball player, yes, right? Oh well, both of you are, Max as well. But you and your partner Wilson, that's how you met, right? Yeah, yeah. We were uh pitchers on the baseball team. I think Max has got us beat, though. He was at a higher echelon of of of uh of team, but we were we were playing D3 baseball up in the woods in Massachusetts at uh Williams College, and by senior year, social members, I think was the right way to describe us. There wasn't really a whole lot to do out there except for play baseball and drink beer, and we weren't really playing that much baseball, so we got really into the beer uh and uh started homebrewing, started trying as much as we could, and we're just talking a lot about how we could try to get into the industry and no pun intended swung for it after uh after we graduated. Love it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. History, the two pitchers. I love it. And Max, baseball background for you as well,

Max’s Baseball To Burgers Shift

3:16

right? Yeah, because like you were on like a major league baseball track and everything, like heavily recruited. I mean, for as far as I can remember, that was the one goal and the only goal I had for years. Um, everything revolved around it. Flying from high school, you know, even into middle school, trying to be on the best teams. Um, but yeah, it abruptly stopped, you know, when I chose to leave. But for a while, that was that was the only goal, only dream I had. And you started cooking while you were playing baseball, is that right? Yeah, I always had a knack for it. Um, my dad uh loved cooking. Um, my mom, I I would cook for myself middle school, high school. Um, and it just came in fruition whenever I started realizing that I do have a true passion for this industry. So, what made you decide to go from baseball to burgers? Uh well, baseball to burgers, that was the big jump. Uh originally, like I said, I had a knack for it for a while. And then my brother, Cameron, worked on Maui, Wolfgang Puck, restaurant entry for years. Um, he and I had a conversation that he was gonna start a restaurant in San Francisco, and at the time I was a sophomore in college, and I was like, he is opening up that restaurant. I might take this opportunity and try to get in as quickly as I can, and that's how it came about. That's awesome. And which restaurant is that here in the city? Uh it is Heritage, it's heritage where commissary was and still is, um, and is where we do our Tuesday pop-ups now. Okay, very cool. For our listeners, what is a commissary? Uh, it's so when we started the farmers market, um, we we didn't have a kitchen, we didn't have, you know, any place to hold our food, cook it, prep it. So we have to find a kitchen that allows us to use the equipment and you know, hold our food, you know, for Sundays. And that's uh Heritage Was our commissary. And that's very similar to the model you used as well, right, Tommy?

Contract Brewing And Fruited Radlers

5:09

Like you had a you had a like a partner that already had like a like a company that or something that yeah like helped brew. Yeah, similar. Yeah. We, you know, Wilson and I, neither of us are brew masters. We know enough to be dangerous, I think is kind of what we say. But we were kind of working on these recipes, working with folks that that knew more than we did to kind of really dial them in. We we didn't feel confident enough to try to build a brewery, and so we thought, well, let's work with existing breweries with our own recipes and then kind of brew on site there. And so it can be called contract brewing or gypsy brewing, but uh it's a model that a number of folks, 21st Amendment was doing it for a long time out here. So then we kind of bounced around from brewery to brewery and uh and we're making our stuff um yeah from the get-go. And we're still doing that. It's a we we love it because then we don't have to, you know, pour a ton of money and time into equipment, things like that. We get to be a little bit more nimble. So where's your beer brewed today? We have a couple different spots where we brew, uh we brew some in uh Santa Clara with Devil's Canyon brewery, and then a lot in uh actually Wisconsin and Potosi, Wisconsin, right outside of Dubuque, Iowa. A big reason for that, we're we sell in about 25 states around the country, um, and we're coast to coast, and so centrally makes a lot of sense. And then two, what we focus on is these fruited rattlers, and so we mix beers with fruit juices, and you need specialized mixing equipment. Everything needs to be stabilized and pasteurized, really, is the right way to do that. There's not that many breweries that have that, it's a big Hulkin piece of equipment, and most of the places you find pasteurizers are in these old school upper Midwest breweries. It works pretty well for us. Very cool. I love that. Yeah, and and I that that's that has like a strong like science base to it, like food science and everything. Yeah, you mentioned pasteurization, you mentioned adding the fruit juice after fermentation, right? I know a lot of like the sort of the the fruity beers from you know some of the some of the bigger, you know, the biggest players, they use like artificial flavorings and stuff like that, right? Yeah, yeah. If you're brewing with fruit or things like that, you're you're essentially what's gonna happen is your yeast is still active, and so it's gonna eat up a lot of the fruit and a lot of the kind of um, you know, and leave the rind, essentially. And so that's why a lot with a lot of fruit um uh fruit beers, you can feel more bitter and more rindy. Um, and so for us, mixing it afterwards, if you don't do it with flavors, if you're really adding juice, your yeast should be kind of full or dead, but but you know, essentially you're adding in a lot of extra sugar, a lot of extra fuel to a uh, you know, what was once a fermenting beverage. And so without pasteurization, you can run into bottle bombs, can bombs, stuff like that. That's everybody's worst nightmare. Yeah, so yeah, makes sense. Makes

The Real Meaning Behind “Mallards”

7:55

sense. And Max, I know that your company name Mallards, right, is spelled differently than a mallard duck, right? So you've got the duck as the logo, which I think is really cool, and the legs are the L's, super clever, right? But Mallard's has a different meaning, right? And that's like a food science thing as well. So it's part of like the lore, if you will. Um, the word is pronounced my yards correctly. It's I believe it's a French word. Um, but to your point, when I first came up with the name, um, it's called the Maillard reaction. Mallard reaction is simply if someone were like to say brown the meat or the caramelization on the steak or the crust, it is just the the browning of proteins, you know, that dark, you know, brown color. Um, I originally thought that word was pronounced um mallard's as well, and hence the duck. And then I was on Google one day uh typing in the word and I saw a little translate slash like the the speaker icon and I hit it and it said my yard. I'm like, oh boy, do I have a situation on my hands now? Because I came up with the logo, the duck holding the burger and all of it. But I was like, it's one letter off. Let's just roll with it, and uh hence my yard's mallard duck. So well, and it honestly I think is super clever, right? And because people have that conversation, like it's misspelled. Is that how it's spelled and everything? So it actually creates a nice conversation. Honestly, really, it does. Can I ask a question? Yeah, please. Um, what do people usually call oh man? Yeah, uh I could not tell you the the amount of different pronunciations. Mallards, my yards, mallards, just it's all I probably get 10 to 20 questions on it daily. So what do you call it now? Like what is your official I I simply put two words together, my and then yards. So my yards. All right. So now for anyone listening, it's my yards. Okay, great. I still could be wrong, so damn hold me to it. Great. Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the thing about pronouncing things correctly. There are a lot of cities in Kentucky named after European cities: Paris, London, Versailles. But if you pronounce it Versailles, nobody knows what you're talking about. You have to pronounce pronounce it versales. So I'm gonna still say Mallard's. Each of their own, I guess. Yeah.

Why A Shared Space Works

10:06

One of the things that everybody knows in San Francisco and the San Francisco food scene is like the cost of doing business out here, right? You all have a unique business model where you have a shared space, but then you each run your own individual businesses, basically separately, but also complementary. How did that idea kind of come about? And how do you see that being a potential framework for like future businesses? Yeah. So Wilson and I kind of came up with this, I guess. I I don't know if we were really reinventing the wheel, but we had this idea uh when we were opening our spot in Oakland. We had to have food because of our licensing, and neither of us had run a kitchen. Unlike Max, I do not have a knack for cooking. So I was uh we were looking at this and we were like, oh man, do we hire a chef? How do we do this? And we thought, well, you know, we could try to half-ass it, or we could find somebody that's really invested into it, that's really into it, and see if we can get them to run our food program. So um out there in Oakland, we partnered up with Lovelies and they were doing just pop-ups at the time as well, and said, Look, here's the deal. We, you know, you come in, you can run this kitchen space, we run the bar. Uh, it also makes these spots more approachable. You're kind of, you know, you're splitting costs. There's a lot of um, a lot of really great things about it. So that was our trial run, and it worked great out there. And so, you know, now we don't really have interest in running our own kitchen, you know, at at any point. And so when we were looking into San Francisco, really the thing that jumpstarted it was I live in the Outer Sunset and uh right around the corner from the Outer Sunset Farmers Market, saw Max uh get written up, and especially like the baseball connection was pretty fun. So I was like, oh no way, like you know, I've seen the line, but I've never actually waited in it. So let me let me go over there and introduce myself. We started chatting and and uh yeah, next thing you know, we're looking for looking for spots.

Choosing The Sunset And Signing Leases

11:58

Max, let me ask you what drew you to the sunset itself? So when I first moved to San Francisco, the sunset was my my first place. Um chose it actively, it was close to heritage on the bus or bike, so I was familiar with it. Um, but to fast forward to when we first opened up our pop-up, uh, I always had a farmer's market in mind. Um, that was always going to be our first endeavor. Um, I looked at Clement Street, looked at the ferry building, of course. Um, something just drew me to the sunset. It was more community-centered, it was more our vibe. I'm a small, you know, small town kid from you know Greensburg, Pennsylvania. So like, you know, the hustle and bustle, you know, the the the ferry building was like maybe much for me and and my vision. And uh I just grew to the sunset again, the community, the people, the style, the vibe. Um, I really had my eyes set on it. Tommy, did you have like similar feelings about the sunset? Because you mentioned you already lived here. Yeah, I lived here, so I I knew it pretty well. Um, if anything, it's funny. I I felt like I I uh I was playing devil's advocate a little bit. I mean, I love the sunset, absolutely love it, and especially the outer sunset. Um, I was really convinced that it was underserved for the kind of the how the neighborhood had changed of late, um, especially with the park opening up. I think a lot more demand uh out there too. As Max was really honing in on the sunset and we were both looking at this space. I was really excited, but I also said, look, it's foggy, like classically, hard to get people out of here and just making sure talking to my team, and then you know, and everyone was saying, No, no, we want to do this. I was like, Okay, great. Then now I can, you know, now I feel no shame and and no guilt. So very good. Uh yeah, yeah, it was great. So when did you guys actually start thinking about opening a brick and mortar location? Oh man. When was that? That was like uh like two years ago? Yeah, sounds right. Yeah, probably two years ago. A while. So it's been like two years in the making, and you guys officially opened your doors when? About two months ago. Yeah. Like our spot in Oakland uh is in an old auto repair shop. We really wanted to find something with kind of just something interesting, something in the building, some history, some, you know, some feeling there that we could work with. And so we we looked at a couple spots and then once you start engaging with lease negotiations and then permitting process, you know, that's like those two things right there. It's like a year almost. So yeah. And for the building itself, it used to be what Gus's was. Did that like factor into your decision and the the history of the location? Oh, totally. I mean, this was this was like the community hub. I mean, it was basically a food desert out there in the outer sunset, except for um, you know, Norieoga produce uh for a long time. And so I think knowing the neighborhood and kind of knowing that, knowing the the history there, um uh Dimitri and Bobby are our landlords, the Gus' guys, and they're awesome.

Handling Lines And Daily Volume

14:50

For listeners who may not have seen the lines firsthand, can you tell us like what sense uh in terms of volume are you serving on a daily basis? More than I expected. Yeah, every time you look at the line, we just never get a sense of like a moment, which is a great problem to have. And we I think if you would have come see us the first one or two weeks, I think it's night and day on how efficient and how much better we're doing collectively. But um, it seems like all of sunset uh seems to be there at least once or twice since opening. So everybody waits for the lines to die down and then they give in and then they wait in line. That's what we did. We waited maybe a week, week and a half for you guys. And what one thing that was really great about your space is that you know, because you have beers ready to go, you don't have to wait for a beer other than the line. Yep, you can go and enjoy that while you're waiting in line and chat with your friends or neighbors or whoever you're the with, or you know, even you just meet somebody new, right? That's one of the things that I really love about your space. So the line, not not so bad, right? Yeah, the line culture isn't too bad. We're we're but you're working on it, right? We're always trying to work on it. We were just over there before this, and it's like, can we change the seating? You know, it's like we're trying to be as efficient as we can in the space that we've got, basically. Um, but but yeah, I mean it's like Max said, it's a great problem to have. How many people do you think run through every night? So we're we're getting hundreds of people in there a day. Yeah, I would say. So both of you are baseball players.

Using Failure And Competition To Grow

16:16

Do you take any of the lessons that you've learned from baseball and apply it to your work today? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm uh that's who made me, you know, who I am today, and it's embedded in me. Just the competition, just that natural just being driven, you know, like never never say no, never stop trying, you know, trying to make things better. And it's like if we do get more efficient, we do get better, all it is is another, you know, starting line. And you know, trying to be the best that I was baseball-wise, you know, back in my day. Just that competitiveness. Yeah. And I think also, I mean, baseball is uh classically a game of failure, you know, you fail two out of three times that you're up there and you're, you know, best hitter in the league. And it's it's also something where I think it's been nice, you know, especially doing this now for a decade and a half, you fail all the time, constantly making mistakes or doing something you wouldn't you wouldn't otherwise do. And so I think it having that kind of background in baseball and and being well acquainted with failure is you know, it makes it a lot easier to just kind of turn the page and try again the next day and go from there. Yeah, what I'm hearing is though, it's the getting yourself back up. They only see the the successes, but actually it's through a series of failures that people who refuse to give up that finally make it to where you guys are, right? The dream of two pitchers 15 years ago is completely different from what it is today. And like we've pivoted hundreds of times since then. And so I think it's like being willing to mess up, not have something go well, try something else and and like and work on something. So nice. So we've seen businesses like Andytown, Devil's Teeth, Hookfish, Palm City, and now you guys become the d destinations in their own right. Do you see that the success of the other businesses also gave you confidence to open up in the Sunset District? I certainly think so. Um very familiar with all those. I've been patronizing them for a while now. You know, from when I moved back or moved here in 2017 and just the progress and the the new storefronts and everything, I think it's just made us more confident in our decisions, you know, coming and bringing, you know, two pitchers in my arts to the sunset. You see the excitement in the neighborhood again, especially living out there when these things are popping up and new things are happening, and we were very confident of if you build it, they'll come. I mean, there's so many people, there's so so many folks that live out there, and and there's a really a need. Also, I mean, during the construction process, people were banging the doors down. So that also helped. I have to point out that's a baseball reference. Yeah, so right. Feel the dreams. All right. When you think about success five, ten years from now, what would you like your impact on the sunset and the community to be? I think we see this space and I think make it always unique, make it its own, never stray from that. And I want it to be a place for people in the sunset and for those who travel out there to connect and eat good food, have good beer, drinks, and just have it be around. Yeah. I think I think we always try to focus on you know doing things the right way and good things happen. And so treating people with respect, our staff, our customers, you know, trying to kind of just give it our best. And and yeah, so I I think like if it's a community space, if people feel like they're being appreciated, both the folks that work there and the folks that come in, like you can't fail. That's how we like to treat it and how we like to think about it. Well, the sunset is so lucky to have you guys. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Ted?

Favorite Orders And How To Visit

19:42

Yeah. Um, so a question for Max. What is Tommy's favorite thing to order from my yards? Oh, he told me the other day it's the bird. Yeah, the bird's eye. Yeah, the bird's eye. Sorry, yeah, not the chicken sandwich, the bird's eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is that? What is the bird's eye? We make our own ginger herb salads. We have like Thai basil, mint, kefir lime leaf, cilantro, and then that's with the vinaigrette, and then we have um our fried shallots on there with white American cheese, and then we do our own uh Thai style chili aioli. That sounds delicious. So spicy, sweet, umami. It's really good. It is, it is good. It's I mean, it's a super interesting burger. It's like one of my favorite burgers I've ever had. So, well, same question for you, Tommy. Uh, what is Max's favorite drink to order from Two Pitchers? Oh, the weekender. Got it. Yeah, yeah. Why the weekender? Uh the passion fruit. Yeah, it's my wife's favorite, too. Yeah, yeah. We're looking uh at a way to incorporate it into our menu to some degree. I love it. Yeah, yeah. And Max is a question for you. Who is Rosie? You got me. Yeah, I got it. I'll give you a hint. We were just talking about Rosie on the way here. Who is Rosie? Rosie's not a human. I so I you still got me. I don't know. Yeah, that's the old airstream. Oh, the trailer. Yeah, the trailer. Oh yeah, I don't know how many rivets we put into that thing, but like thousands and thousands of rivets, and so Rosie the Riveter. Oh, that's great. It was Rosie the River. Yeah, I didn't know that piece. That's great. All right. So for our listeners, how can they find you and when can they find you? For us, that's the brick and mortar Wednesday through Sunday. You know, we open up earlier on Saturdays, Sundays, weekend. And then uh we are still at the farmers market and we are still at the Tuesday pop-up at Heritage. What are the addresses for your Oakland and for the outer sunset? So yeah, in uh in Oakland, it's 2344 Webster Street. It's uh in uptown Oakland between uh 24th and 25th on Webster. Uh, and then out here 3821 Noriega Street in the old uh Noriega produce building. But just head to the beach, go to Noriega, and then walk a couple blocks up and you'll find it. Yep. See him spot the line. You'll spot the line. Yes. Well, Tommy and Max, thank you both for joining us today and sharing your story. I also want to thank my co-host Ted for helping us put this conversation together and bringing his perspective as a fellow Sunset resident, neighbor, and supporter of local businesses. For years, many people viewed the West Side as a place to live, but not necessarily as a destination. That's changing. More and more people are coming to the Sunset to eat, to gather, to spend time together, and businesses like yours are helping shape that transformation. So thanks to everyone listening. And if you haven't uh yet visited either Two Pidges or MyArts, please be sure to check them out and support local businesses. It's okay to call them Mallards. Or Mallards, yes. All right. Thanks for listening to The Sunset Connection. I'm Jessica Ho, and until next time, I'll see you in the neighborhood.