Wolfgang Puck Catering & Events to launch South San Francisco kitchen
After an earlier plan was scuttled by the pandemic, the world-famous chef's catering arm is setting up shop.
The Bay Area is getting a new catering and events division of the world-famous Wolfgang Puck culinary empire, which has been on hold since the pandemic.
Wolfgang Puck Catering & Events will move into a 9,240 square foot space at 1080 San Mateo Ave. in South San Francisco, which was previously used as a commissary kitchen center by the previous tenant. Public records indicate that Puck's catering group applied for two licenses related to the production of food at this facility.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed that it would focus on workplace catering services and workplace dining, a part of the business which has grown in importance across the country. A spokesperson for the company said that it is looking forward to "future expansion opportunities into special event caterers".
Wolfgang Puck Catering & Events was founded in 1998. It offers office catering packages and workplace dining options. These include grab & go, pantry services and retail coffee barista service.
Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego are among the nine markets currently served by the company.
Wolfgang Puck Catering announced in late 2019 that it would be setting up in the Bay Area. They planned to cater corporate events, social gatherings, and celebrations. The group has not confirmed if they had a lease in place before the Pandemic Shutdown of March 2020, which made office catering and group events impossible.
In the early 1980s, the Austrian chef opened the Sunset Strip restaurant Spago in Los Angeles. Later it was moved to Beverly Hills. He was awarded the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef Award in 1991 and 1998. In 1995, he won the Restaurant of the Year Award. And in 2005, he received the Outstanding Service Award.
Puck has three separate business divisions: Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc., which is a portfolio that includes company-owned casual restaurants, franchised casual restaurant, and consumer goods.
Wolfgang Puck Catering, part of the British food giant Compass Group (whose American division includes, amongst others, Bon Appetit Management Co.
SFF Logistics Inc. is a Delaware corporation that owns the facility in which Wolfgang Puck Catering plans to become a tenant. This will be done via a subsublessor agreement between Lemonade and SFF Logistics Inc.
Lemonade Restaurant Group, which sub-leased the facility until August 2025, sued Garten (formerly Oh My Green), the former tenant of this building in 2020 for allegedly owing rent exceeding $230,000. According to an attorney representing Lemonade, the parties reached a settlement and the case has now been closed.
Lemonade's counsel told me Tuesday that a new tenant will be in the space. However, he was unaware of who the tenant would be or how much space they would occupy. Lemonade is one of many landlords and vendors who have sued Garten in the past few years for non-payment of rent, services, and food supplies.
Lemonade became a sublessor of the apartment in 2016, and Garten (then Oh My Green), moved into the space via a sub-sublessor contract in 2018, but left after falling behind in rent. According to the terms of the sublessor agreement, the monthly rent was set to increase to $16,659 at the time the tenant moved in and to under $20,000 a year by 2025.