About Us

The Alfresco Heating core team is made up of warm, knowledgeable, patio-heating professionals. From the moment we first answer the phone to the moment our customers first fire up their new patio heaters and beyond, we support them through the process of selecting patio heaters and installing them. After installation we remain available for customer service and, in the San Francisco bay area, repair service. If it's outdoors we would love to help heat it.

Eric is the Founder and Owner of Alfresco Heating, which he established in 2003. Eric has grown Alfresco Heating from a one-person, patio-heater repair company to a competently-staffed, high-service, outdoor heating organization providing national consultation and sales, along with San Francisco Bay Area installation, and repair service. He has trained his team to provide exceptional service, and also still enjoys sharing his extensive knowledge of outdoor heating directly with customers. After work, Eric enjoys hiking in the hills of Marin, ecstatic dancing, a sip of good whiskey, and his two cats.

Randy is the Installation and Service Manager at Alfresco Heating. Randy has established a reputation as the best in the industry. He is very knowledgeable and finds viable solutions where others could not. Randy works with our customers to ensure that they get the best possible patio heating results. He has managed the installations of thousands of patio heaters and many gas lines. He joined the Alfresco team in 2008. He's been working in construction since he was a young man and has been building things since he was a boy. After hours Randy helps his kids compete in Pinewood Derby, Baseball, etc. Randy kayaks, dives, and hunts rocks.

Jennifer wears many hats. She is an expert on outdoor heating and provides personalized consultative sales. She collaborates with and supports both the national sales and the service-installation departments, and sees to it that the day-to-day operations of Alfresco Heating run smoothly. She also oversees other staff, who also fulfill customer and vendor-related roles and administrative tasks. Jennifer joined Alfresco Heating in 2012. She has a background in education and is a former business owner. In her spare time she enjoys hiking around Marin County. She is a mother of two.

Shawn is a Service Technician. He installs and repairs patio heaters at your bay area location. Shawn has a background in a variety of professions including creative media, bartending, and working in telecom. He even owned a graphic and web design business as well as a motorcycle shop. When he's not busy troubleshooting and installing patio heaters, Shawn loves spending time with his family, going on hikes, listening to music, Muay Thai, and riding motorcycles.

Mike is our Business Operations Manager and Interim Warehouse Manager. He proudly joined the Alfresco Heating team in May of 2022. He handles orders start to finish from sales, customer support, and processing all the way through inventory management, packaging, palletizing, and shipping. He’s a world-class customer service expert with over 18 years of professional experience across different industries. He’s been working in management since he was a teenager and prides himself on being a perfectionist. He loves helping others and is passionate about skateboarding, rock climbing, volleyball, and yoga.

Iona is our Bookkeeper. She is highly organized, efficient, detail oriented, committed, professional, and experienced. For more information on Iona: Marin Bookkeeping - Beyond Bookkeeping. On a more personal note: she enjoys humor, is playful, loves dogs and has lived in Germany, Israel, India, Holland, and America.

Gigi is the Director of Client Strategy at Psyberware, an ecommerce advertising agency. She and her team manage our search marketing campaigns in Google and Microsoft, and keep our shopping ads running at top performance with product data feed optimizations. In her free time she likes to get out in nature, play with her cat Roma, and catch up with friends and family.

Alfresco Heating History

Eric Kahn opened The Cooks' Line in 1996, offering repair and parts for commercial kitchen equipment. It was incorporated in 2000.

In the late 90s to early 21st century, AEI, the big southern California based distributor of patio heaters, wanted to replace their old Northern-California repairman because he was gaining infamy for his shenanigans.

At the time The Cooks' Line was primarily a one man show with the owner, Eric Kahn, doing a vast majority of the restaurant-repair work himself. Some of those restaurant repairs were on patio heaters. One day, after working outside on patio heaters all day, Eric discovered that he was in a good mood. He realized that he preferred working outside, in contrast to working in greasy restaurant kitchens. Another day while working on patio heaters at a Union Street Cafe he was approached by a man interested in purchasing 100 patio heaters. In 2003 Alfresco Heating did sell 100 patio heaters (mostly Infrared Dynamics SunPak) to the Carneros Inn in Napa. Eric Kahn's company (The Cooks Line) installed them as well, and Alfresco Heating was born.

Continuing, since then, to work almost entirely in patio heating, has enabled Alfresco to become authorities in a field where there is much misinformation available on the web. And while there are other companies in the San Francisco Bay Area who sell patio heaters, others that install patio heaters, and others that repair patio heaters, there is not another company that can offer the same full service consultative sales-installation-repair service package that Alfresco Heating, because it is so uniquely specialized, can offer.

The trade name "Alfresco Heating" is trademarked with the USPTO. "Alfresco" is defined as "out of doors" by http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/alfresco, with similar definitions available in any English dictionary.

Alfresco Heating's office, workshop, and warehouse is located in Novato, Marin County, California, about 25 miles north of San Francisco. At this time they have no show room or show yard, but many examples of their work and the patio heaters they carry can be found at restaurants bay-area wide.

Alfresco Heating has six full time employees (as of Fall 2020) and a number of PT, spot, and contract associates. Randy Field is the Installation and Service Manager. Jennifer Barretta is the Director of Customer Success and Eric Kahn is the Founder. 

Alfresco Heating holds a C-36 contractor's license. Gas lines and installation and radiant gas heaters fall under that classification. There are many fine examples of Alfresco Heating's clean gas piping and patio heater installations around the bay area.

Alfresco Heating provides repair service to commercial-quality patio heaters, bay-area wide. Many customers know that calling Alfresco means that a technician will show up who not only knows their products but also has the repair parts on hand to fix patio heaters on the spot. Alfresco Heating offers outdoor-heater repair service in San Francisco, Oakland-Berkeley, Napa Valley, Santa Rosa, south to San Mateo, and all points in between.

Alfresco Heating offers patio heating consultative services in the bay area. They know how to heat patios effectively and safely, and have a knack for balancing effectiveness with aesthetics. They do a great deal of national phone and email outdoor heating consultations. Selecting the right heaters and placements for a patio can be tricky. With the help of Alfresco Heating's expert advice your outdoor heating will look good and feel cozy warm.