Cowgirl Creamery is closing its famous cheese shop and Sidekick Cafe at the San Francisco Ferry Building on April 10 after 18 years in business — a blow for the food hall that some critics said was already losing its status as a culinary destination even before the pandemic.
Cowgirl, one of the Ferry Building’s last-remaining original tenants, attributed the closure to the pandemic. It will be the eighth vacancy in the famed food hall, which usually has just one or two empty spaces.
Cowgirl exemplified everything the Ferry Building marketplace is supposed to be about: artisanal, locally made food that had rightfully earned national acclaim. The closure doesn’t impact the creamery’s production: Cowgirl will continue to make cheese, selling in stores nationwide and at its Point Reyes Station location.
Amanda Parker, managing director of Cowgirl, said the Ferry Building was always a challenging place to operate a business because of the unusually busy, chaotic environment. But foot traffic came to a grinding halt last March when shelter-in-place orders first took effect, and it never fully came back, she said.
“No ferry traffic, no locals except on farmers’ market days, no tourists,” she said. “We tried really hard to make it work and ultimately it’s just not an operation we could sustain any longer.”
stock Wix photo