Casalegno's Reopened as the Casalegno Farm's Own Store, Three Curving Miles Above Soquel Village
If you live up Old San Jose Road, how far do you drive for a carton of eggs on a Wednesday? Until this month, the honest answer was all the way down to Soquel. Since the weekend of October 9, it has been the blue-and-white sign at Laurel Glen Road again.
Casalegno's Country Store reopened that weekend under Matt and Marissa Kotila. Matt's mother was a Casalegno. The store has changed hands and changed concepts over the years. This time it reopened with a farm attached, and for anyone who lives on the ridge, that link to the farm is what makes the reopening matter.
In Santa Cruz County, "Casalegno's" refers to two things. One is the family farm on Old San Jose Road. The other is the country store and farmhouse next door at Laurel Glen Road. Lookout Santa Cruz reported in August that for about two decades, the two shared a name and nothing else. The family had stepped back from daily operations and leased the store to another operator.
The Kotilas have run the farm since the early 2000s. They grow tomatoes, fragrant red garlic, flat Romano beans and summer squash for nearby markets. Earlier this year, the family members who had owned the store building for 25 years decided to move on and offered it to the couple. That reunites the farm and the store for the first time in about 20 years.
The shelves show the change. The Kotilas told Lookout the store would carry products from nearby family farms: fruit, vegetables, cider, eggs, milk, meat, and homemade pasta, pickles and sauces, plus coffee, cold drinks, snacks and premade sandwiches. The Santa Cruz Sentinel's opening-week announcement listed farm-fresh produce, a coffee and espresso bar, pastries, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, and local goods. The store's own website calls it "a small, thoughtful farm store, market, and coffee shop."
What the couple said about the concept explains the store better than a product list does:
"We're not trying to necessarily recreate the past, but we want the spirit of this place to continue on, with these things that matter to us: agriculture, feeding people, and relationships."
Marissa Kotila said that to Lookout.
That spirit has a long track record on this corner. The building has sold whatever the road needed in each era. Today's farm-store version is the most local stock it has carried in decades.
| Era | What the store was |
|---|---|
| 1929 | Opening year in the Soquel Pioneer & Historical Association timeline; the store sat at Laurel Glen and Old San Jose roads, built into the front of the family home |
| Mid-1900s | A neighborhood fixture selling gas, cigarettes, baseball cards, hardware and baby chicks |
| Through the 1980s | Run by Frank Casalegno, George's son, who kept a cigar box for a register |
| Early 2000s | Leased by the family to an outside operator |
| 2021 | Renamed 3 Sisters 3 Corners at Casalegno's and refocused on organic and holistic products |
| January 2026 | Closed |
| October 2026 | Reopened by the Kotilas as a farm store, market and coffee shop |
The Soquel Pioneer & Historical Association timeline dates the store's opening to 1929. The store's website says "Established 1929," and the Sentinel says the shop was built that year. Lookout's August story gives 1926 as the year the family founded the business, so the two dates may refer to different milestones. According to Lookout, patriarch George Casalegno paid for the store with money he earned in the Alaskan Gold Rush.
Matt Kotila described the old store's character to Lookout this way: "Everybody treated everybody the same. That was one of the principles that my family always had. It didn't matter how dirty you came in, or how clean, or how rich, or whatever." If you want a reminder of the old store before you stop by, it appears in a mural in downtown Soquel.
There's a family memory on the website that ties the current concept back to the old orchards. As a boy, Matt earned 25 cents a box from his grandfather for gathering fallen apples, which became cider at Martinelli's in Watsonville. Today, produce from the same land is sold in the store next door.
Lookout describes Soquel as "three curving miles away" from the store, with no other shops serving the residents nearby. Midweek traffic on the way down is what makes the trip long.
"It doesn't seem like a long way from here to town, but you get to the middle of the week, and sometimes traffic backs up 30 minutes to go down to town."
Matt Kotila told Lookout that longtime friends pushed him to reopen. They wanted to be able to stop in for "their milk, eggs and things" again.
That's the store's job. On a midweek afternoon, someone who lives above the village can get milk, eggs, coffee, a sandwich and whatever came out of the field that week without joining the line down the hill. A store that has run on a farm's rhythm for nearly a century has also turned into a way around a traffic jam.
The hours match that commute. Per the Sentinel's announcement, the regular schedule starting the week after opening was 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day except Monday. A 7 a.m. open covers a coffee on the way down, and a 7 p.m. close covers the drive home. Those were the hours announced before the doors opened. For the current schedule, check @casalegnoscountrystore on Instagram, which the Sentinel named as the store's account.
The opening weekend set the tone. The Capitola-Soquel Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m. Saturday, followed by live Italian mandolin music until 1 p.m.
A closer store helps most when the trip into town gets harder, and a few things on the way between Laurel Glen Road and the village are worth knowing this fall.
Night paving on Soquel San Jose Road. Santa Cruz County's 2026 Pavement Management Project covers Soquel San Jose Road from Soquel Drive to Olive Springs Road, along with Daubenbiss Avenue, Dawn Lane and Shauna Court. The county says the Soquel work will be done at night. The construction schedule on that page currently reads "Project is pending completion," so it doesn't give a firm date for when crews will reach your stretch.
The Bay Avenue off-ramp detour. If your trip home starts on southbound Highway 1, the Bay Avenue/Porter Street off-ramp has been closed since August 2 for about four months. Per the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, the detour continues to the Park Avenue exit and then comes back along Park Avenue and Soquel Drive. Four months from August 2 lands around early December, but no reopening date has been published. The Sentinel reported that Beer Thirty Bottle Shop and Pour House at 2504 S. Main St. sits only a couple hundred feet from the closed exit, near Carpo's Restaurant, Buzzo Pizza and Sunnyside Produce.
The last pumpkin weekend on Daubenbiss. Sunnyside Pumpkin Patch at 2831 Daubenbiss Avenue is listed as open daily in October, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends, according to Visit Santa Cruz County. Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, so Friday and Saturday are the patch's last two days of the month. Daubenbiss is also on the county's paving list, so the same street is getting seasonal traffic and is in line for resurfacing.
The Kotilas lived in the house behind the store as newlyweds and raised three children there over seven years. Marissa Kotila wrote on the store's site that they've now spent another 15 years in the home they built nearby. Matt told Lookout that coming back "was really like coming home," and that they first dreamed of a gathering spot for coffee, food, local produce and shared information about 20 years ago. Their stated goal is to eventually open to visitors every day.
For now, the store at Old San Jose Road and Laurel Glen Road opens at 7 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday under its announced hours, with coffee on the bar and produce from the farm next door.
Room Real Estate got its start in Felton, and we spend a lot of time on mountain roads like Old San Jose Road. We know a stop like Casalegno's shapes daily life up there, and that the nearest coffee and a carton of eggs can matter a lot. If you live off Soquel San Jose Road and want to know how your property stacks up this season, request a quote. We'll walk the land with you and give you a straight answer.
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