New In-N-Out is coming to a Fresno-area city. But first an old restaurant gets razed
The metal teeth of an excavator bit into the roof of the Sugar Pine Smokehouse Wednesday morning, beginning the demolition of the Madera restaurant and bar.
The building is being knocked down to make way for what will eventually be an In-N-Out Burger.
The four-year-old Sugar Pine had occupied the spot on Cleveland Avenue, just west of Highway 99.
But it has already signed a lease on a new home that will open in several months.
In-N-Out
The future In-N-Out will be the first location in Madera.
The project is still in the pre-construction phase, according to the company.
It’s not clear yet when construction will start, nor when the restaurant might open.
Once construction does start, it takes about eight or nine months to build the restaurant and open it, according to Mike Abbate, assistant vice president of real estate and development.
What about Sugar Pine?
The barbecue restaurant was recently operating under a lease with the building’s owners in which either party could pull out with three months notice. Still, the owner of the local restaurant, Lisa Gill, said she felt pushed out of the space.
“We definitely were pushed out,” she said. “In-N-Out has a lot more money than we do. At the end of the day, the big corporate giants won.”
But Sugar Pine isn’t giving up yet.
The restaurant has already signed a lease for a new location it hopes to open in mid March or early April.
It’s at 1410 Country Club Drive, not far from Highway 99, and across the street from the Dutch Bros Coffee that’s under construction.
The Sugar Pine Smokehouse’s Cleveland Avenue location closed Dec. 23. They had planned to close Dec. 24, but so many well-wishers came out to say goodbye, they ended up closing a day early, Gill said.
“Our community is so amazing,” she said. “They came out and we sold all our food.”
The new restaurant is about one-quarter the size of the old space.
“It’s going to be a really small location, probably about the size of what our bar used to be,” she said. “We’re still really excited. It’s a new adventure.”
It have the same food, the same menu and the same familiar faces working.
She plans to add 24 taps, specializing in local beer.
Gill recently bought the business from the company that owned it, giving some employees a share in it.
Until the new location opens, Sugar Pine is catering, and planning to build that side of the business, she said.
