Toy Boat cafe put up for sale during closure
After spending 38 years in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond neighborhood offering nostalgia and ice cream, Toy Boat Dessert Cafe is being sold.
The business has been shut down since shelterinplace orders began in March. A “for sale” sign hangs in the window, which caught the attention of social media on Wednesday afternoon and was first reported by SFGate. Coowner Jesse Fink, who ran the business with his wife, Roberta, confirmed the pending sale in a recent Facebook post. In it, he said he and his wife are planning to retire.
“It is our hope that someone full of vigor and vim will take over Toy Boat and keep The Boat afloat for many years to come,” Fink said in the
post.
Toy Boat Dessert Café was a neighborhood hangout for young families in the Inner Richmond over the years, thanks to a menu of dessert classics like chocolate sundaes, pies and banana splits, among many other treats. The shop also had a popular sandwich menu and breakfast options, including bagels.
But it was the aesthetic — a coinoperated mechanical horse in the dining room, retro action figures hanging on the walls alongside Pez dispensers and classic movie posters from films like “Ghostbusters” — that made Toy Boat Dessert Cafe truly special.
The business closed on March 16 due to the coronavirus pandemic, when the owners had to fire eight to 10 employees , Fink told The Chronicle in April. Any hopes for the future were dashed when Fink was told by an insurance broker in March that his Hanover Insurance policy excluded coverage for viruses.
Fink moved to the Bay Area from Brooklyn in 1979 and opened the cafe on Clement Street in 1982.
“In a day of cookiecutter retail, there is only one Toy Boat Dessert Cafe,” Fink said in the Facebook post. “It was truly a labor of love.”