Puesto
A prominent (and growing) Mexican restaurant chain has closed all of its California locations this week, owing to safety concerns among staff and dramatically reduced income without the ability to offer on-site dining. Puesto, with its seven locations from Santa Clara County in the Bay Area to Irvine to its home base in San Diego, has fully shuttered for the time being, laying off all but 20 members of its 650-person team across the entire chain, with reps telling Eater that “even at their strongest the sales are so low that they cannot continue to operate” until on-site dining is allowed once again, which could still be many weeks away. Sales at some locations, they say, have dropped by as much as 95 percent, and given the big-ticket locations (including at some retail spaces like Park Place in Irvine) and little help from landlords, ownership says there is no viable economic path to staying open right now.