The beloved SF bar that could be killed by greedy billionaires

Many San Francisco Giants fans are relieved to have this dreadful season end. But for the small businesses around Oracle Park, the end of the season has brought sadness and major uncertainty, especially with the looming threat of an MLB lockout leading to lost games in 2027.

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“Baseball is vital to our survival,” Momo’s owner Scott Morton told SFGATE by phone last week.  

Momo’s, an American grill, is one of the few businesses in SoMa that predate Oracle Park’s opening, as its 1998 debut came two years before the Giants moved downtown. Ever since then, Momo’s has been an iconic place to meet up before and after baseball games. (Unless Netflix buys out the whole place for opening night, like it did in March.)

Morton worked at Momo’s for years, starting as a seasonal employee and working his way up the chain to become general manager in the mid-2010s. When the previous owners decided to sell, Morton and his wife, Caitlyn, bought it in 2019, and have kept things humming through the years. And just how important is Giants baseball to a place like Momo’s?

“Eighty percent of our annual revenue comes within the 81 home games that take place during a baseball season,” Morton said. “I can speak on behalf of Momo’s, baseball is our only lifeline for success, and I would probably venture to guess that many of our neighbors around there feel the same way.”

While some of those neighbors around the ballpark have changed over the years, they all are still trying to capture that ballpark crowd — and either already were or have become Giants fans. In a two-block square — between 2nd and 4th streets and King and Howard streets — there are more than a dozen restaurants and bars that rely on games to keep their doors open, and the same is true for more food businesses along the Embarcadero, too.

“That is our whole season,” Pat Belding, manager and part-owner of Frankie’s Java House, told SFGATE by phone last month. “I mean, our season goes around the baseball season. It’s not around the Warriors that are just a quarter mile away, or, you know, Fleet Week, or anything else along Embarcadero. It’s just all about Giants or activities at Oracle Park.”

That’s where the lockout comes into play. MLB’s collective bargaining agreement with the players association expires on Dec. 1, and it’s been widely expected that the owners will lock the players out in an attempt to install a salary cap in the sport. The players have stood firm against the salary cap, setting the stage for a prolonged tug-of-war. And the fears over lost games in 2027 are evident all across the sport.

Morton said he’s been following stories about the lockout “very closely” going back as far as spring training. Merkado owner Fabien Santos told SFGATE he’s also been keeping tabs. And Belding?

“Too much, I’ve read up too much,” Belding admitted with a chuckle. “And it’s pretty frustrating.”

Belding sees this fight as “billionaires fighting millionaires” over what to do with the sport’s massive amounts of money, all done without considering the “devastating” ramifications on stadium workers and peripheral businesses like his.

Morton feels similarly, saying lockouts “typically put places out of business.” 

“An offseason always means less foot traffic, less passerbys, just less juice in that China Basin, South Beach part of the city,” Morton said, who also said they reduce hours and staffing in response to that. “That already lasts six months when the Giants don’t make the playoffs. So anytime you tack on a seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th month onto that — God forbid they miss the whole season debating over whatever they’re debating — it’s going to be dire straits for a lot of people around that part of the city.”

The lockout also won’t allow any of the businesses a chance to find too many alternatives. In the last lockout in 2022, a deal wasn’t made until early March, early enough to keep all the games but forcing the first week of the season to be rescheduled to the end of the year. Just like the Giants have to save the ballpark for the chance of baseball, local businesses won’t want to miss out on the revenue from baseball games that could happen. But that causes a ton of uncertainty and stress — which they will have to pass along, too.

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“The way we are going to get treated by the Giants or by Major League Baseball is the same way we’ll have to treat everybody else,” Belding said, referring to vendors, employees and other partners. “Everybody will just have one one hand in and one hand out, and just kind of waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Morton added that while they do their best to forecast and budget, every offseason is a gamble due to the significant drop in revenue. “If you start tacking on weeks and months onto that, it becomes really a game of financial Russian roulette every single day that you’re open,” he said.

Having a good landlord helps, too. Morton said he has a wonderful relationship with his and that they’ve helped in previous tough times, like the 2008 financial crisis and during the pandemic. 

“They’re prepared to see Momo’s stick it out and fight the good fight once again,” he said. 

What’s the key to survival? “It’s about being an adaptable space because everything changes in the wind,” Santos, of Merkado, said. “So yes, the lockout is in the back of my head, but I already know what that’s going to do. It’s more about, ‘Are we capable to kind of recover from a lockout?’”

Santos said he hoped to do community events, like a semiregular day market, to rally everyone together. And several restaurants have found good business with private events (Momo’s hosted Mike Krukow’s family for a night during his final weekend) and buyouts from the tech community. 

But everything comes back to baseball, in the end. When the Giants are rolling — like, say, back during the World Series title runs in the 2010s — things are great for everyone. Santos told SFGATE earlier this month that, even giving conservative estimates, his business increased by at least 40% to 50% in those Octobers. Morton directly tied those runs to his decision to buy Momo’s himself and admitted he’s “always chasing that high.”

“Obviously there was some financial review and business acumen that went into buying the business,” Morton said. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t the nostalgic elements of, ‘Man, if I could keep this place going and be there for another Giants World Series, it would just be so fun to share that with my staff, share that with my family and and have Momo’s be around through another great run of Giants baseball.’ So to have the good fortune that we had of the 2021 season, especially coming out of COVID, was extremely special.”

But since that 2021 playoff run, the Giants put up four straight mediocre seasons and then, this year, had an all-out disaster. Not only did the team lose 97 games, but the litany of off-field scandals — led by the team’s Pride Night fiasco — had a direct impact on local businesses.

Morton has big-picture concerns about a prolonged lockout knocking out most or all of the 2027 season. He fears it could push fans away for good, like the 1994 strike did for many baseball fans at the time. But even if the 2027 season goes on as normal, there still is a lot to be desired out of the Giants from his perspective as a business owner and a fan.

“What we really want is a full ballpark run by a competent ownership group who believes in putting a competitive team on the field,” Morton said. “At this point, while we might try to achieve greatness and hope for it, we’re really just hoping that they can keep the place full for a six-month season — which they seem to have had some trouble doing the last couple of years.

“So lockout or not, the Giants have a lot of work to do moving forward.”