‘They just keep making it harder.’ Fresno restaurant closes, cites California’s rising costs
After 16 years, Yosemite Falls Cafe has closed its Ashlan Avenue restaurant, its owners citing frustrations with doing business in its neighborhood and in California.
The remaining three Yosemite Falls locations – at Blackstone and Shaw avenues, Cedar Avenue and Clovis – will remain open.
The all-day restaurant known for big breakfasts like chilaquiles and steak and eggs closed for good Sunday. On Thursday, a worker was packing up the patio. Rows of chairs out front were for sale for $5 each.
A lengthy sign on the door thanked customers and explained why it was closing. Reasons included the safety of the area near Highway 99, declining sales, rising costs of doing business and recent government mandates.
The restaurant, just west of Highway 99, has dealt with car break-ins, graffiti, homelessness, vandalism and dumping in its parking lot. All of it “scares people in the area,” the sign said.
“The cost of dining out has increased because of higher costs to operate, so we have lost customers, and unfortunately, we can’t survive operating in this large building and location,” the sign reads.
Food costs are one example of rising costs, said Manny Perales, president and operating business partner, in a phone interview with The Bee.
A jug of fryer oil used to cost between $18 and $21. Now it’s $42, he said.
The price of some meats has doubled.
The building will be sold to a large company that will invest in the property and provide 24-hour security, he said.
Doing business in California
Perales also expressed frustration with the rising cost of doing business in California.
Every time minimum wage goes up, it costs the four restaurants about $175,000 in increased labors costs over the year, he said.
He criticized mandates like California’s recent revival of a COVID-19 paid sick leave law.
Businesses with at least 26 employees must pay for up to 80 hours of sick leave for full-time employees for illness, quarantining or caring for family with coronavirus. Part-time employees can get paid for the equivalent of what they work over two weeks, with half that available only when they or a family member test positive.
“When they make mandates to small business, there’s no discussion about … what can the hospitality industry afford,” he said. “It’s just, boom. They sign a bill and we gotta pay it.”
The Ashlan location has had the hardest time of all the four restaurants finding workers during the current labor shortage, Perales said.
While some large companies have raised wages to attract workers, smaller businesses can’t afford that, he said.
All those issues combined make running a restaurant challenging, he said.
“At some point you’re just … making enough sales to pay the bills and stay afloat,” he said. “They just keep making it harder.”
It’s not the first closure in that restaurant’s ownership group. High Sierra Grill, at the corner of Bullard and West avenues closed permanently during the COVID-19 dining room shutdowns in the summer of 2020.
Perales and others held a rally at the time denouncing the state’s safety restrictions.
Still, the restaurant’s owners said they were thankful for all the customers – sometimes multiple generations of them – who patronized them.
The sign also said they were proud of their more than 200 employees. Many were college students and the restaurant scheduled shifts around their classes.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
