{"id":465431,"date":"2026-09-16T09:08:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T09:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/465431\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T09:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T09:08:20","slug":"everyone-is-tightening-their-purse-strings-inventive-sf-chocolate-shop-closes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/465431\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Everyone is tightening their purse strings\u2019: Inventive SF chocolate shop closes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published Sep. 15, 2026at3:12pm<\/p>\n

One of San Francisco\u2019s most innovative chocolate companies has closed. Topogato, which opened last May at 5203 Geary Blvd.,\u00a0made its final sales Monday. Owner Simon Brown plans to sell off equipment and find a new tenant. He will continue to make his cherry-shiso-balsamic truffles and strawberry almond bars available online. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve loved everything I\u2019ve made,\u201d Brown says, \u201cbut it wasn\u2019t growing quickly enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown blames record-high cacao prices and the steep cost of doing business in San Francisco. Cacao prices tripled in 2024, peaking toward the end of the year at a record $12,000 per metric ton. The price came down last year, but the correction overlapped with a tapering of consumer demand and increased costs related to packaging, materials, and shipping, Brown says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ABrown started Topogato during the pandemic, growing it into an online business and retail shop. | Source: Courtesy Topogato<\/p>\n

Topogato\u2019s margins are sometimes around 60%. But chocolate is not a necessity, and going into last year\u2019s holiday season, shoppers were retreating from splurges. Though he recovered some sales toward the end of the year, the holiday boost was not enough. \u201cPeople seemed to pull back on all their spending,\u201d Brown says. \u201cMy friends in restaurants and bars also said it was a rough year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Operating in such an expensive city was also a challenge, Brown says. Though he had a good deal on the space \u2014 his landlord raised his rent only moderately after the first year \u2014 he would have needed to roughly double his sales this summer to have confidently carried on operating in the Richmond. \u201cWe\u2019re at this crazy place in the city where everything is astronomically high,\u201d Brown says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of wealth here, but everyone is tightening their purse strings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ATopogato truffles are known for unusual flavors and stunning visual appeal. | Source: Courtesy Topogato<\/p>\n

But the challenges Brown confronted aren\u2019t unique. Oakland\u2019s Xocolate Bar and Jade Chocolates in Chinatown closed in the past two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brown hopes to keep Topogato going, but he\u2019s not sure what the path forward looks like. A second business partner, who joined after Monroe exited, also decided to step away this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s strange. I saw a lot of potential with Topogato,\u201d Brown says. \u201cI\u2019d like to start something else. But I need some time and room to breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published Sep. 15, 2026at3:12pm One of San Francisco\u2019s most innovative chocolate companies has closed. Topogato, which opened last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[16190,757,16191,12462,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-465431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-chocolate","tag-closures","tag-desserts","tag-richmond-district","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}