S.F. craft beer pioneer Monk’s Kettle to close
A pioneering beer destination is closing its doors in the Mission District after 16 years, with plans to reopen in Oakland, citing the changing demographics of San Francisco as a key reason for the move.
The Monk’s Kettle will serve beers and burgers at its 16th Street location through June, then will take a hiatus before opening the new restaurant in the fall at 5484 College Ave. in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood. (The San Rafael location of Monk’s Kettle, which opened in 2021, remains open as usual.)
Its departure from San Francisco marks the loss of one of the city’s most important hubs for craft beer. With 28 tap handles and a prolific bottle list that spans several pages, Monk’s Kettle played an essential role in cultivating the city’s craft beer boom in the late aughts and early 2010s. For beer nerds who wanted access to some of the most sought-after European beers, especially Belgian ales, it was the place to go.
But the San Francisco of 2007, when Monk’s Kettle opened, is very different from the San Francisco of today, said Christian Albertson, who co-owns the restaurant with Nat Cutler. Early on, it became a haven for restaurant and bar industry workers after their shifts.
“We’d get our second dinner rush at 10 o’clock,” he said. The kitchen would stay open until 1 a.m., and they’d be kicking people out at 2 a.m. on weeknights.
In Albertson’s view, the exodus of restaurant workers from neighborhoods like the Mission to more affordable parts of the Bay Area is part of the reason why the late-night business almost entirely evaporated. Instead of sticking around for a 10 p.m. dinner, the servers, cooks and bartenders have to rush to BART to get home.
“It just seemed like the demographics of the city changed,” said Albertson.
Craft beer is no longer as hot as it once was, either, with sales growth stagnating nationwide. Many Bay Area breweries have been acquired recently or, as with San Francisco’s flagship Anchor Brewing, shut down entirely. If beer lovers are no longer flocking to the Mission for hard-to-get pints, the solution for Albertson and Cutler may lie in pivoting to family-oriented restaurants in communities like San Rafael and Rockridge.
He also noted the rise of food delivery as a major pain point for the business. Delivery now accounts for about one-third of the sales at the San Francisco Monk’s Kettle, and it’s not nearly as lucrative as dine-in. Customers ordering delivery don’t order drinks, and they tend to order fewer sides or appetizers. Then there are fees on top of that. Albertson said he paid over $100,000 in fees to delivery companies last year.
Albertson and Cutler have long been open about the struggles of operating a restaurant in San Francisco. They opened an ambitious, beer-centric restaurant with tasting menus, Abbot’s Cellar, in the Mission in 2012, and noted a minimum-wage hike as one of the reasons they had to close it two years later. In 2017, the business partners opened up their finances to former Chronicle contributor Maggie Hoffman, who documented their ups and downs over the course of a year.
Like the industry colleagues they served, the Monk’s Kettle co-owners made their own exoduses: Albertson and his family left San Francisco for Marin County, while Cutler moved his family from the city to the East Bay. That’s a large reason why they opened in San Rafael and now Oakland. The Rockridge restaurant, in the space that once held popular French bistro Citron, has a larger seating capacity than the San Francisco restaurant, and a backyard that seats 30 people under an ivy-coated trellis.
They’ll move the draft system from San Francisco to Oakland, along with the entire back bar. The food menu will be similar, but they have plans to make it “more upscale,” Albertson said.
“We had expected to always stay in San Francisco,” he continued. “But it’s been hard for the last 10 years.”
“We had expected to always stay in San Francisco. But it’s been hard for the last 10 years.”
Christian Albertson, Monk’s Kettle co-owner