Shuggie’s, the neon-bright Mission restaurant that made sustainability feel like a party, will close July 11, chef-owners Kayla Abe and David Murphy announced (opens in new tab) Thursday. The restaurant, with its green-and-yellow sign hanging over 23rd and Bartlett streets like a fluorescent amoeba, collected numerous accolades during its four-year run, in large part thanks to its ethos of minimal waste with maximum style. 

Abe says it’s not the restaurant’s focus on turning would-be waste into pizzas and crudos that hampered its success. Instead, she points to a confluence of factors: rising rent, erratic labor costs, and changing dining habits. Numerous other small-business owners reached out after the announcement to say that they, too, are teetering on the brink, she says, noting that Thai restaurant Funky Elephant, located a block away, will close in late June.  (opens in new tab)

“For small businesses like ours, post-pandemic, it’s been a crap shoot,” Murphy says.

“We have put in so much of our own personal finances, and there is truly not a penny more that we can give,” Abe says. “Without the promise of something changing significantly, why would we keep making this massive gamble?”

The couple tried several strategies to keep Shuggie’s thriving. Last July, they removed their popular pizzas from the menu (though they remained as a Sunday-only offering) and rebranded the restaurant from Shuggie’s Trash Pie + Natural Wine to simply Shuggie’s. They repainted the Instagram-famous, Big Bird-yellow front dining room in safety-cone orange. In March, they began giving out dressed-up fish sticks over dill panna cotta during happy hour, meaning free food for the evening with the purchase of a $16 drink. They introduced a $40 prix fixe menu on Wednesdays. 

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Though none of it was enough to ensure Shuggie’s future, they’re still optimistic about San Francisco. “Coming out of the pandemic, we all wanted a breath of fresh air,” Murphy says. “We did all the right things — we 100% made the restaurant we wanted to see in the world. We’re so grateful we got to give our gift to the city.”

When Shuggie’s opened in 2022, it was the cure to what ailed San Francisco. A menu of sausage pizzas and mushroom hot pockets served in a Lisa Frank fever dream (opens in new tab) made Shuggie’s a tonic to the Doom Loop narrative of the post-pandemic years. The scene was an over-the-top bacchanalia, with Murphy in the kitchen, sporting his signature cowboy hat, (opens in new tab) and the couple’s beloved bulldog, Beef (opens in new tab), at the center of it all. Jazz bands, crawfish boils, ceramic mouth-shaped cups and boob-shaped plates: Shuggie’s never ceased to be funky and joyful.

The couple has deep roots in the Bay — Abe is a fifth-generation San Franciscan — and began their culinary careers with Ugly Pickle Co., a business built on selling jarred farmers market produce that would have otherwise gone to waste. That project made way for Shuggie’s, which catapulted the couple onto the national scene. Less than a year after opening, Bon Appétit listed Shuggie’s as one of the best new restaurants (opens in new tab) of 2023. Murphy made a brief appearance on Bravo’s “Top Chef” in 2024. 

Now, the two plan to take a breath and decompress. That said, there’ll be pop-ups in September; their apartment rooftop will be the site of intimate, five- and six-course BYOB dinners. On July 11, they’ll host a farewell bash at the restaurant, with friends DJing and a band. They’ll cook at Outside Lands, then plan to travel. 

Climate-positive ingredients will always be the couple’s focus, though they’re not sure they want to open another restaurant. They had planned to open a second in Tokyo, which kept them from expanding in San Francisco. Down the road, they say, they may open a culinary design studio.

“We have not been taking salaries for the better part of a year and a half,” Abe says. “It’s not a ‘woe is me’ story. That’s pretty much every restaurateur out there.”

“Any restaurant that is a mom-and-pop shop that hasn’t been funded by big VC and big, big money — most of those people don’t take paychecks,” Murphy adds. “If we had big VC money, we’d have kept going for another decade probably.”