Like so many restaurants during 2020, San Francisco’s historic Cliff House will be closing permanently. On Sunday, the 157-year-old restaurant announced that it would be closing its doors on December 31 due to both the COVID-19 pandemic and delays by the National Park Service in agreeing to a long-term contract.
The restaurant ended indoor dining back in March and shut down 10 weeks later after only offering takeout service. After another stint of takeout-only in the summer, the restaurant determined that the business model simply wasn’t sustainable. The Cliff House’s contract with the National Park Service expired in 2018, and the restaurant has been hoping for a long-term extension ever since. Instead, the NPS’ delay forced the restaurant to operate under a series of short-term contracts that proved detrimental to business. That delay, combined with the devastating effects of the pandemic, led to the decision to close permanently.
