SLO loses another chain restaurant in a shopping center hard-hit by closures

The lights are on at Tahoe Joe’s San Luis Obispo location, but there’s nobody home.

The Promenade Shopping Center steakhouse on Madonna Road closed Aug. 26, the latest chain restaurant to shutter in that shopping center. A note taped to the door says it all while offering thanks to the customers for their business and hoping “to serve you at another location very soon.”

The restaurant has suffered the same fate as the HomeTown Buffet eatery that shares the 15,000-square-foot building with the steakhouse. The once-popular all-you-can eat buffet closed in early 2016, and the space has been empty ever since.

Both restaurants were owned by the same parent company, which has declared bankruptcy.

Earlier this year, Fresh Acquisitions LLC, the parent company of six restaurant chains with locations across 27 states, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

CNN reported in April that “prior to the pandemic, Fresh Acquisitions had about 100 locations across the United States of all of its brands. However, the company was all but wiped out with just six Tahoe Joe’s steakhouses remaining open in California.”

Once with 10 locations, Tahoe Joe’s is now down to five restaurants. Besides SLO, Tahoe Joe’s has now closed in Modesto and Chino. The Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno, Roseville and Vacaville spots remain open as of this month.

Despite the name, the chain never had a Tahoe location. The original restaurant — opened in 1996 in Fresno — is now closed as well.

More empty spaces

The west side of the SLO shopping center now has the building housing the former HomeTown Buffet and Tahoe Joe’s for lease along with another 9,000 square feet at the former Dollar Tree location.

In the past few years, the center was able to draw new strong anchor tenants in REI, Sprouts and now Hobby Lobby, under construction. It has one major 24,000 square feet of retail space still available.

At the front of the center, the former Applebee’s space remains empty. All three vacant eateries are sit-down restaurants, a sector that has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even during the pandemic there has been a boom in new drive-through restaurants in California, a trend that has bypassed the city of San Luis Obispo where drive-throughs are banned.

This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 5:00 AM.