Grégoire, a gourmet sandwich spot that has served Berkeley for 23 years, is opening its first San Francisco location — a franchise — in the Inner Sunset in November.
Founder Grégoire Jacquet and his wife, Tara, opened the original Grégoire down the street from Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 2002. Jacquet, who came to the U.S. from France in 1989, had a background in fine dining, but decided to take a different approach: A 500 square-foot hole-in-the-wall with a rotating, seasonal menu in the form of takeout sandwiches and salads.
The food, particularly Grégoire’s ping-pong-ball-sized potato puffs — golden and crispy on the outside, and fluffy on the inside — gained a devoted following. In the early years, Jacquet even had employees sign non-disclosure agreements in an attempt to keep his recipes under wraps.
To package the puffs, Jacquet designed and patented his own takeout box: A distinctive orange octagon cardboard container with venting holes. “I didn’t want to put my food in some styrofoam clamshell,” he said.
Like the puffs, the boxes served as branding for the restaurant. “When you look at the recycling bin and you see a Grégoire box, you know exactly where it came from,” he said.
He remembers “how proud I was, as people turned their heads when my wife would call me Grégoire. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, you are Grégoire!’”
In 2006, the Jacquets opened a second Grégoire in Oakland, which also served as a central kitchen for both locations. It proved to be too much; they shuttered the Oakland location in 2017, feeling burnt out and wanting to spend more time with their family.
But around 2022, with the kids off to college, the Jacquets decided to start growing the business again. This time, they decided that franchising was the way to go. The food could come from a central kitchen in Emeryville, which would keep quality consistent.
“You don’t need to know how to cook at all,” he said. “You just need to care about what you’re doing, and put a sandwich together.”
Last December, after months of searching for the ideal franchisees, Jacquet met a couple at the Alameda Flea Market who reminded him of himself and his wife in the early days. “They have personalities. They have the will. They have everything that I need.”
After scouring locations all over the Bay Area, from Palo Alto to Walnut Creek, the Inner Sunset space stood out to Jacquet as “perfect.” The space was previously occupied by Jamba Juice, and has been vacant for about a year.
It’s a combination of easy public transit, access to Golden Gate Park and close proximity to the University of California, San Francisco, that drove Grégoire to this area.
“Having a location in San Francisco is dear to my heart,” said Jacquet, who moved to San Francisco in the late 1980s and lived in the Sunset for a few years. He now lives in the East Bay, five minutes from the Berkeley location.
The new Grégoire will be the latest of a series of recent openings in the Inner Sunset. For months, new businesses have been sprouting up in this westside corridor.
In March, a French bistro, Caché, opened its doors. Luke’s Local, an organic grocery market, arrived in mid-May, followed by Mixt, which opened its 11th location in San Francisco in a former T-Mobile space.