Belcampo Meat Co. announced the news on Friday. The location at Town & Country Village on El Camino Real will stop serving cooked food on Feb. 18 and close for good on March 2.
The meat case at Belcampo Meat Co. in Palo Alto, which will close in March. Photo by Ciera Pasturel.
The company plans to open the commissary kitchen in San Francisco this spring, then a 7,000-square-foot flagship restaurant at the Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo this summer "as part of a new growth strategy for Northern California," the announcement reads.
The shift will allow Belcampo to focus on growing other parts of its business: e-commerce, food delivery and "large-format premier dining experiences," the company said. CEO and co-founder Anya Fernald told the San Francisco Chronicle that Belcampo's delivery numbers have gone up by 25 to 40 percent year over year. They plan to deliver cooked food out of the commissary kitchen "to homes all over the city," Fernald said in the announcement.
Fernald, a Palo Alto native, opened the first Belcampo butcher shop and restaurant in Larkspur in 2012. Belcampo raises all its animals at a 20,000-acre Mount Shasta farm, takes them to a 20,000 square-foot slaughterhouse designed by renowned animal science doctor Temple Grandin just 20 minutes from the farm and butchers all the meat by hand rather than machine.
Belcampo opened in Palo Alto in 2014, at the time part of a retail expansion push in Northern and Southern California.
There are now eight Belcampo locations, including in Oakland, Santa Monica and Los Angeles, and plus a forthcoming New York City outpost opening next month.
"It's bittersweet for me -- we have had an great run in both our Peninsula and San Francisco locations but we could not be more thrilled to partner with Bohannon Development Company and bring the Belcampo experience to the Hillsdale Shopping Center," Fernald said in the announcement.
The San Mateo Belcampo will be a "fine casual" restaurant serving organic, humanely raised meat sourced directly from Belcampo's farm. It will also have a retail butcher case where customers can buy packaged meats, fresh cuts and cured meats.
The meat-centric restaurant will join a host of new dining options at Hillsdale Shopping Center, where Uncle Tetsu Japanese Cheesecake, Midici the Neapolitan Pizza Company, Blue Whale Poke Bar and Grill, Tacos El Grullense, Kuro-Obi (a quick-service offshoot of New York's popular Ippudo Ramen) and Sarku Japan have recently opened.
Stop by the Palo Alto Belcampo during its last week to get a farewell "goodie bag" with e-commerce discounts, complimentary products and Belcampo gift cards.
