After 25 years of waterfront views, sombrero-filled birthday celebrations, and tortillas fresh off “El Machino,” Chevys Fresh Mex restaurant in Emeryville is closing, the San Francisco Business Times reports. Xperience Restaurant Group, which took over the Chevys brand in 2018, announced that it will close the Powell Street restaurant in a mass layoff notice to the location’s 62 employees. The last day for the restaurant is set for Tuesday, April 16.
It’s unclear what will happen to the picturesque building, but the Times notes that the property was last sold for $5.5 million in 2007. The Bay Area-founded chain has undergone a series of ownership changes over the years, SFGATE reports. The brand started under Warren Simmons and his son Scooter in 1986, who opened the first Chevys location in Alameda, and then grew the brand throughout the Bay Area in the subsequent years. The brand was later sold to Taco Bell Corp. in 1992 before it eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2003. It was acquired by Real Mex Restaurants in 2004, though Real Mex also wound up going bankrupt in 2007. The brand has been under Xperience Restaurant Group since 2018 and has gone from 40 restaurants at the height of its popularity — including four locations in San Francisco — to 22 locations nationwide with six branches left in the Bay Area, including Emeryville.
The news comes as the restaurant scene at Emeryville’s Bay Street development has seen a handful of openings over the past year or so. Even as longstanding tenants including locations of national chains such as California Pizza Kitchen and P.F. Chang’s exited the East Bay shopping center, new businesses spearheaded by local chefs and restaurateurs have moved in to fill the vacancies. In October, the first East Bay location of Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant Flores opened both a full-service outpost and a fast-casual taqueria next door. In November, the team behind Michelin-recognized Rooh in San Francisco rolled out Pippal, an upscale Indian restaurant serving Dungeness crab masala and composed cocktails.
