Specialty’s Café & Bakery Inc., known for breakfast-lunch menu, is closing its more than 50 units on Tuesday, blaming the coronavirus pandemic restrictions for shutting down its business, the company says on its brand website.
“Specialty’s Café & Bakery is closing after 33 years of business,” the company said on its scrapped website. “Current market conditions attributed to COVID-19 and shelter-in-place policies have decimated company revenues. Our last day of operations will be Tuesday, May 19th, 2020.”
Specialty’s Café has fast-casual restaurants in the states of California, Illinois and Washington.
The Pleasanton Weekly, which first reported the closures on Saturday, said the company was founded in 1987 in the San Francisco Bay area and moved its headquarters to Pleasanton, Calif., in about 2004.
“Specialty's Café & Bakery focused on breakfast and lunch items and baked goods made from scratch, along with coffee beverages,” the report said. “In addition to sales to individual customers at shops, the Specialty's model involved serving business clients and other large group orders.”
Many of Specialty’s cafes were in or near office buildings or office parks, the traffic for which was especially curtailed by coronavirus shelter-in-place orders in mid-March that were designed to stem the spread of COVID-19.
On its now-one-page website, Specialty’s noted: “Our customer service team will be reaching out to cancel and refund any orders placed for Wednesday, May 20th, and beyond. We sincerely thank you for your business and support over the years.”
Specialty’s was purchased during 2016 and 2017 by a subsidiary of Monterrey, Mexico-based Fomento Económico Mexicano S.A.B., or FEMSA, which has investments in the beverage, retail, health and fuel sectors.
In 2016, FEMSA Comercio, through its subsidiary Cadena Comercial USA Corp. LLC completed the acquisition of an 80% stake in Specialty’s Café & Bakery. In January 2017, Cadena Comercial completed the acquisition of the remaining 20% to become its sole owner.
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