Dandelion Cafe blooms through tough restaurant climate

For the last decade, Dandelion Cafe has remained committed to serving the community and adapting to challenges as restaurants in the city close at an alarming rate.

Executive chef and co-owners JC Ricks and Sarah Lieberman have grown what began as a small Bellaire coffee shop in 2016 into a three-location breakfast-and-brunch institution, with outposts in Bellaire, on the Rice University campus, and in the Heights. Their staying power is notable in a city where the restaurant industry is bleeding. 

According to the Texas Restaurant Association, 88% of Texas restaurant owners are navigating higher food costs, 66% are seeing labor costs rise, and 52% have seen a drop in customer traffic.

Dandelion Cafe is not immune to those pressures. But it is still open, seven days a week, with scratch-made sausage grinding in the back and croissants coming out of the oven every morning.

“Not to sound pessimistic, but the big goal for 2026 is really to survive,” Ricks said. “I think everyone right now is dealing with a lot, whether it is financially or just fear of what is going on in the world.”

From the kitchen to the community

Growing up in a Liberian household, Ricks spent weekend mornings watching his mother work through elaborate breakfasts, oversized omelets, Hawaiian bread breakfast sandwiches, and plates that were both generous and made with care. Those early memories stayed with him.

After a year of studying international business in college, Ricks realized the classroom wasn’t clicking. He began asking himself, ‘What do I love to do?’ The answer always pointed to the kitchen.

“It kept leading me back to cooking,” he said. “And I was like, ‘ok, how do I make this a career?’”

A conversation during a visit to his cousin in Alabama turned into a laptop search for Houston culinary schools. Ricks toured three programs and chose San Jacinto College on the city’s east side, the farthest from where he lived, but the one where the instructors felt right.

“Our lemon blueberry French toast, I really love that dish because of just the technique that goes into it. And biscuits and gravy. Our biscuits are really good, and that just kind of hits home for me too.”

C Ricks, co-owner, Dandelion Cafe

From there, Ricks spent years working his way through fine-dining and corporate-dining kitchens, building technique and a repertoire that would later define Dandelion’s menu. He later worked with Underbelly Hospitality before Lieberman, who had opened Dandelion in 2016, brought him on in the cafe’s second year to develop a food program after the departure of a kitchen manager.

“When I got here, I just kind of started revamping it a little bit,” Ricks said. “It went from like four to six menu items to like 20-something menu items within about a year.”

The food as philosophy

The cafe takes comfort food seriously, builds it from scratch, and never cuts corners on the parts diners cannot see.

The team grinds its own breakfast sausage, bakes its croissants in-house, makes five or six proprietary spice blends, produces its own jams, salsas, and pastries, and does all of it across all three locations.

The cafe’s chicken and waffles earned citywide recognition in 2023 when it competed on “Good Morning America” and was named the best chicken and waffles in Houston, besting several longtime establishments. The dish, a cornbread waffle topped with a fried chicken thigh marinated for 24 hours in a chorizo and Creole spice blend and finished with a whipped, spicy maple butter, has since become the cafe’s signature item.

But Ricks said the dishes he loves most are those that reveal the technique beneath.

“Our lemon blueberry French toast, I really love that dish because of just the technique that goes into it,” he said. “And biscuits and gravy. Our biscuits are really good, and that just kind of hits home for me too.”

The business of staying open

Scaling from one location to three was entirely trial-and-error. Learning the legal and operational architecture of a restaurant group, how LLCs are structured for multiple locations, and how a brand name is properly licensed across entities were lessons learned in real time, often the hard way.

Lieberman founded Dandelion Cafe as a coffee shop, leveraging a love for the craft she developed while working at a small shop in South Philadelphia and years of experience in design and hospitality. She grew the original Bellaire location largely on her own before Ricks joined, and the two eventually became business partners as their personal relationship deepened.

“We’ve always gotten along really well. We’ve always partnered in the restaurants really well,” Lieberman said. “We have our own lanes.”

Those lanes are clearly defined. Lieberman runs the front-of-house and business operations; Ricks oversees the food and back-of-house. 

She said the most surprising lesson from a decade of running restaurants in Houston was not about food costs or foot traffic, it was about people.

“The hardest part is managing the people,” Lieberman said. “With every situation, I kind of take it, I process it, and I learn from it and try to do better the next time.”

That extends to how the cafe treats its staff. Lieberman said she often thinks about the responsibility of leadership, that every decision she and Ricks make touches the livelihoods of an entire team and their families.

“We’re taking care of them and their livelihood,” she said. “That is something that was also surprising to me, but I think that is for anybody who gets into ownership of restaurants.”

Regular customers are known by name. Staff at each location have grown into an extended network that, even when people move on, still stays connected to the cafe’s evolution.

“Creating community through good food, good coffee, and good service,” she said. “That is really what our goal is.”

Ricks said the focus is on perfecting what already exists, not expanding prematurely. It is the same approach, he said preceded each prior opening.

“We’re dotting our I’s and crossing our T’s,” he said. “We feel like we’re doing an amazing job, but you can always get better. You can always do better.”