Comfort food, pies, and pork products are about to take their leave from 24th Street after four years when Pig & Pie closes on July 31, its owners have announced.
“The unpredictablility of restaurant life is extra challenging with two little ones in diapers,” the owners wrote in a sign posted in the window. “We’re so grateful to this community for its patronage and friendship over the past four years.”
The business is now up for sale, awaiting a buyer who will purchase the assets and reopen with their own concept, said co owner Miles Pickering. As far as the plans for the future, they are somewhat up in the air, but Pickering has one clear plan:
“I’m going to be a househusband for a little while. I’m gonna spend some time raising my two young boys,” he said. “Restaurant work is not conducive to family life.”
That “unpredictability,” inherent to the restaurant industry, is particularly bad in San Francisco, Pickering said, though not necessarily because of its pledge to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018.
“I would say actually more than minimum wage increase, [it’s] just the general difficulty of doing business in San Francisco. They really don’t make it easy here for small business people, and it’s unfortunate,” he said. “I wish I had opened up in Oakland instead. I hear it’s easier there.”
Business was all right, Pickering said, despite having slowed down in the last six months.
And for those worried about the Discolandia sign that adorns the building, never fear – Pickering said it’s protected by the conditional use permit for the space and can’t be removed.
The restaurant will host its last in a series of Family Dinner Nights, a weekly event where diners are expressly invited to bring their kids and not worry about youngsters disturbing all the other diners, on Tuesday, July 26, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Fifteen percent of the proceeds from the evening will go to the Mission Kids Co-Op, a local preschool program.
“We’ve actually kind of enjoyed the being in the business and feeding a lot of our neighbors, and I know a lot of people came in last week and told us how sorry they are that we’re not going to be here,” Pickering said. “But something else will come along.”