Mission Beach Cafe shuts after health notices
After a 12-year run on Guerrero Street, the last few months of which saw a bevy of health code violations and a citymandated shutdown, San Francisco’s Mission Beach Cafe closed for good on Friday.
According to the city’s Department of Public Health, a “notice of closure” was placed in the popular brunch spot’s window on Friday. An inspection report filed that same day said the restaurant failed to comply with mandated improvements and failed to pay delinquent license fees for 2019-20.
In a separate note at the restaurant, owner Bill Clarke informed customers that the latest closure was “probably it for Mission Beach Cafe.” The news was first reported on Friday by SFist. As of Monday morning, calls to the restaurant went unanswered and Clarke had yet to respond to email inquiries about the shutdown, though in his note he called the inspection’s details “exaggerated.”
The closure can be traced back to a failed January health inspection when inspectors found mouse droppings on canned goods and cardboard cup holders, a live cockroach under a sink and a dead roach in a piece of equipment, among other things. The business was deemed an “imminent public health risk” due to a “severe rodent infestation” by the health department at the time.
Following a reinspection on Jan. 25, the facility was allowed to reopen, thanks to a new pest control service and improved refrigeration units, among other changes.
Yet, in the recent report about Mission Beach Cafe’s closure, the health department said the cafe still had a “severe rodent infestation.”
Mission Beach Cafe’s issues over the last few years weren’t just limited to failed health inspections. In 2017, nine workers, some employed at the business at the time, filed a lawsuit against Mission Beach Cafe charging wage violations, which Clarke has denied. The legal battle has yet to reach a conclusion, according to recent court filings.