INVEST
min $100
Rikki’s Bar SF will pay investors 5% of revenues each year until 100% of your principal is returned plus 50% on top.
Over the last decade, women’s professional sports have gained stability, investment, and respect.
Nationally and internationally, women’s collegiate and professional sports are seeing an exponential growth that is breaking sports records almost weekly. To capitalize on this growth, women’s sports are being picked up by major networks and heavily marketed and funded.
Bay FC joined the NWSL in 2024 to a sell-out crowd of 18,000 people, and the Golden State Valkyries backed by the full weight of the Warriors organization will join the WNBA in 2025. These teams join the Bay Area Falcons (previously SF Falcons) Ultimate Frisbee Team and the Oakland Soul as women’s professional teams in the region.
The Bay Area is also home to UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Clara women’s sports teams. All of these teams have fans, stadiums, and TV deals.
Locally, to watch women's sports you have to call ahead to bars to see if they'll play the game. This can be met with confusion over who the teams/leagues are, annoyance to switch off men's sports, and almost never the ability to watch with game audio.
At this critical time of growth in women's sports and inspired by the legacy of Rikki Streicher...
Rikki Streicher (1926–1994) was an American political activist, San Francisco LGBTQ leader, and founder of the Gay Games Federation. Her two San Francisco bars, Maud’s and Amelia’s, became legendary gathering places for the City's Lesbian community, providing a safe space, community center, and clearinghouse for information. Rikki was a sports enthusiast and sponsored women’s sports teams for bowling, volleyball, pool, and basketball. Baseball, however, remained her favorite, an enthusiasm rewarded in 1976 when the Maud’s team won the first-place championship in the Bay Area Women’s Softball League. Streicher helped to organize the Gay Games in San Francisco in 1982, and then went on to co-found the Federation of Gay Games, its successor organization.
"Sports are the great equalizer. It is perhaps the only time that it doesn't matter who you are but how you play the game." - Rikki Streicher, 1991
Continuing Rikki Streicher's legacy, Rikki's Bar is an inclusive space focused on giving the women's sports community what they're missing:
When we imagine stepping inside Rikki’s, we picture being greeted by women’s sports on TV and a friendly smile from behind the bar. It’s a grown up sports bar–well lit, clean, and welcoming like a cozy living room. A really big one, where all your friends can join you. The walls hold memorabilia highlighting the female athletes you looked up to as a kid and the stars who are pushing sport forward today. You gather with old friends, make new ones, and celebrate athletes like you. Good drinks and your community make you want to stick around even after the final buzzer. Clean. Comfortable. Intentional. Fun.
Despite the rise in bars across the country committed to consistently showing women's sports or even defining themselves as women's sports bars, no bars in the San Francisco Bay Area have followed suit.
Rikki's seeks to fill this void, creating a space where women's sports are shown so that women and other women's sports fans can watch together and enjoy the same community atmosphere that exists at traditional sports bars.
With a central location in the city accessible by public transit, the Castro/Mission area is an ideal location for Rikki’s to thrive. By positioning the bar between the Castro and the lesbian bars in the Mission (Mother and Jolene’s), Rikki’s goal is to pull customers in from the queer sports demographic including San Francisco Bay Area residents and tourists alike. This area also has high foot traffic and a thriving nightlife.
With the influx of women’s professional sports teams in the San Francisco Bay Area, the bar will seek partnerships with these teams to develop visibility and cross-marketing opportunities. We plan to work with teams such as the WNBA Golden State Valkyries, Bay FC, and Oakland Soul, and become the community’s favored bar to watch away games and host events. Rikki’s will be a neighborhood bar with a mission rooted in honoring a local icon and women’s sports advocate. This mission and welcoming atmosphere will serve the women’s sports community in San Francisco, and build a new community around the bar.
Rikki’s will have an equal number of cocktails and non-alcoholic mixed drinks created in partnership with award winning bartender Suzu, most recently seen on Netflix’s Drink Masters competition show. This intentional focus on a mix of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will support our mission of being a welcoming place where you do not have to be drinking alcohol to have a great time. In addition, the bar will work to source liquors from women-owned distilleries, and wine from women-wine makers in partnership with Beth Hughes, owner of Bottle Bacchanal in the Castro.
As a sports bar for everyone, Rikki’s will offer a wide selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers from local breweries so that our customers can always find something delicious and interesting on the menu to try.
Food at Rikki's can be ordered in, delivered, or brought in by customers. We plan to partner with nearby restaurants so that Rikki's customers can scan QR codes on their tables to order food to be delivered, making it easy to get delicious food without needing to leave the bar.
Rikki’s aesthetic will be a mix of a traditional sports bar with booths and TVs, and a brighter retro space with tasteful sports memorabilia highlighting women’s sports. The images throughout Rikki’s will purposefully emphasize BIPOC and LGBTQ+ women in sports, not catering to any stereotypes.
We intend for the space to include sports-themed games, such as a WNBA Golden State Valkyries themed basketball shooting game and a pool table. This will encourage patrons to enjoy the bright, lighthearted atmosphere of the bar while watching the sports they love.
To get up and running Rikki's needs just over $550,000 in capital. These funds will allow us to sign a lease, obtain a liquor license, make space improvements, purchase furniture and drinkware, and having working capital to get operational.
Email us at [email protected]
