Restaurant Depot has signed the first pre-release on Panattoni Development Company’s Innovation Center project in Rohnert Park, confirmed listing agent Ronald Reinking of Newmark.
The chain has signed a 10-year contract for 46,000 near 90,000 square feet of the larger of two buildings under construction at 5000 Dowdell Avenue on Business Center Drive.
According to Reinking, the wholesaler has been looking for a market for a few years.
“There was nothing that suited their needs,” he said. “Panattoni had previously built a restaurant building for his depot, so[the wholesaler]has been keeping an eye on this project for the last few years.”
Restaurant Depot, based in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, New York City, is a cash and carry wholesaler. This means that companies pay for products on the spot rather than signing an invoice with payment terms. The chain focuses on sales in high volume restaurants and other food service operators, offering uniforms, equipment and supplies, fresh produce, packaged food and wine.
A membership is required to enter the store, but membership is free for anyone who can prove they are authorized to purchase for a licensed business.
The Cash and Carry warehouse store is a self-service model for businesses and an alternative to ordering delivery from distributors.
A similar cash-and-carry store concept is Costco Wholesale, which currently has seven locations in the North Bay and 847 warehouses worldwide. It started in 1976 as Price Club, a membership store for small businesses in San Diego, but within a few years it began selling memberships to the public, according to the history of the Washington-based company. Stores are open to business and consumer members, but locations have opening hours dedicated to commercial customers.
Another foodservice-oriented store chain with local ties is Chef’sStore. It started in 1955 as United Grocers Cash & Carry in Oregon. After being acquired by Smart & Final, it became Cash&Carry Smart Foodservice in 1988 and was later rebranded as Smart Foodservice Warehouse Stores. In 2020, distributor US Foods bought it and gave the chain its current name.
We have 17 stores in California, including our only North Bay store in Santa Rosa. The store is open to the public.
Restaurant Depot began in 1990 as a JETRO Cash & Carry Store and six years later launched Restaurant Depot. The chain has since expanded to 149 locations nationwide. Existing San Francisco Bay Area stores are located in San Francisco, Oakland, Concord and San Jose. The company has announced his three new stores for 2023, the closest of which is in Bakersfield.
The Journal has reached out to Restaurant Depot for comment on the location of Rohnert Park.
Panattoni, an Irvine-based developer of national industrial and office projects, has built major buildings in the southern Napa Valley in recent decades and just completed three warehouses in Fairfield, Solano County. , owned 10.3 acres of land in Sonoma County five years ago. The famous cartoonist, the late Charles Schultz. (His widow, Jeannie Schultz, is the owner of Sonoma Media Investments, the parent company of the North Bay Business Journal and Press Democrat.)
After several years of protected species mitigation and entitlement work, the Rohnert Park project secured city grading permits this fall and work is underway to prepare pads for concrete buildings. Both 28-foot-tall buildings are scheduled to be completed next September.
The Innovation Center project was originally designed with two buildings measuring 89,600 square feet, but parking needs for the restaurant depot reduced the size of the second building to just under 70,000 square feet, Reinking said. says. All contracts for the second building are pending, but he said the space will have two of his tenants if no lease is signed.
Reinking said the project calls for rents of $1.30 to $1.35 per square foot monthly on a triple net basis, making it one of the top industrial rents in the area.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Trevor Buck represented Restaurant Depot in its Rohnert Park lease that was signed in September.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. He was a contributor to San Francisco’s Bay City News Service before coming to Business He Journal in 1999. Contact him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.
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