Pacific Café’s owners are retiring at the end of the summer and hope to sell the restaurant.
Provided by Frank Gundry
Pacific Café, a 51-year-old San Francisco restaurant known for classic seafood dishes and complimentary wine pours, may soon serve its last crab cakes and Parmesan-encrusted halibut filets.
Co-owners Frank Gundry and Ross Warren plan to retire by the end of the summer and have put the restaurant up for sale for $195,000. The venerable restaurant at 7000 Geary Blvd. may close permanently if there is no buyer by the owners’ last day, which remains to be decided.
Gundry, 77, started telling longtime customers of his and Warren’s planned retirement over the weekend. He posted a letter in Pacific Café’s front area, where customers waiting for a table are treated to a glass of wine.
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“There’s been a little bit of crying, and then some praise like ‘you deserve it’ or ‘you’ve earned it,’” said Gundry, who started working at the restaurant as a waiter in 1975, less than a year after it opened. “After 51 years, you get to know people pretty well, so there’s a lot of emotions attached.”
Customers dine inside Pacific Café, as photographed in 2019. Its famous complimentary wine pours for waiting guests began shortly after it opened in 1974.
Provided by Frank Gundry
Business at Pacific Café remains good — its annual revenue is over $1 million, according to the real estate listing — but managing the restaurant has become physically exhausting, Gundry said. He typically arrives at the restaurant from his home in Marin at 3:30 p.m. to make sure everything is ready when doors open at 5 p.m. He checks inventory, manages accounting with his wife, Maureen, meets with staff, then seats customers. He often remains until the last customer has left.
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“It’s something that we’ve been doing for a very long time and we got pretty good at it,” he said.
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Still, operating the restaurant has become more challenging in recent years, as the cost of goods, utilities and labor have risen, Gundry said. Especially challenging post-pandemic, he said, was finding new employees.
Pacific Café’s original owners, Tom Hawker and Jim Thomson, opened the restaurant on July 4, 1974 in the Richmond District. They implemented the famous free-wine policy just days later, pouring glasses while people waited for tables. It’s not unusual for customers to have a second glass, as refills are unlimited and wait times can exceed an hour on busy nights. This practice, along with hearty seafood dishes served with Boudin sourdough, became the restaurant’s calling cards.
“Pacific Cafe may not have quite the same name recognition as some of San Francisco’s other historic seafood restaurants, like Tadich Grill (open since 1849), Swan Oyster Depot (1912) or Scoma’s (1965),” former Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley wrote in 2024. “It’s not a tourist destination. But it has something that those more famous spots can’t claim: the feel of a true neighborhood restaurant.”
A sign for Pacific Café hangs outside the restaurant in San Francisco.
Provided by Frank Gundry
There were four other Pacific Café locations at one point in the Bay Area, all of which remained under Hawker’s and Thomson’s ownership, along with other business partners. All eventually closed, leaving the original as the last one standing.
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Gundry has been a fixture of Pacific Café for nearly as long as the restaurant has existed. In 2014, he and Warren took over the business.
Gundry said he lost a few nights of sleep thinking about his eventual departure from the restaurant, but he hopes to spend more time with his grandchildren in retirement. “It’s been an emotional rollercoaster getting ready to talk to customers and letting people know how we’re approaching this,” he said. “It’s been a great run.”