Popo’s is No Mo’

Woah, that was quick. Less that 1.5 months after we checked out the brand new Popo’s pizza on 24th, it has closed. I’ll bet most of you never even got to eat there. This comes from Popo’s facebook:

On July 10th, Popo’s Pizza was closed due to a disagreement between Charles Hopkins, creator of Popo’s Pizza, and San Francisco Ventures LLC, the company that owned and operated Pizza Di Mano. Moving forward, Mr. Hopkins will no longer be associated with San Francisco Ventures LLC, who will be operating the business at 3331 24th Street in San Francisco. All original recipes and staff have left with Mr. Hopkins.

Doesn’t exactly sound like a clean break-up, judging from an update from Friday:

So a little up date on whats happening to popo’s …..besides trying to keep all my equipment Harold (ted) hand president of San Francisco Ventures LLC..witch ran pizza di mano is now trying to sue me for $50,000.00 …. i guess some people just cant make $$$$ from there own ideas.. oohhh well updates soon thank you all.

Oohhh well.

Update 7/30: This comment was just left from “SF Venturese” who appears to be on the other side of the story:

As always there is two sides to every story but when funds are missing from the bank account and cannot be accounted for, it’s time to pull the plug on an idea or person. Yes we also told him to sell slices.

Sheesh. Remind me to never get into the restaurant business.

18 Responses to “Popo’s is No Mo’”

  1. Chachito415 says:

    Better punctuation, better pizza.

  2. dude says:

    nice to know what happened. Weird. San Francisco Ventures? PIZZA VENTURES?

  3. Geno says:

    Good example of what can happen when gentrification starts to become rampant.

  4. suburbanite says:

    @Geno – this is not an example of gentrification gone wrong (that would be the shootings on 24th…not enough gentrification).

    This is an example of dramatically mis-reading your customers.

    You’re located next to a BART and a bar…and you think your customers want to come in and wait 20 minutes while you cook a whole pizza? Yeah, that’s a fail.

    • Vic Wong says:

      my first suspicion was “did they tell him to start selling slices?” because if so, I kinda agree with them.

      • suburbanite says:

        Yeah…the pizza was really tasty. But, you get off work, pop out of the train station…and then wait 20 min? For an $8 pizza? When I could just walk 2 blocks to Escape?

        • Slices would have been nice, but probably wouldn’t have been anywhere near the same. Escape was close, but I’d rather have a nice pie than a cheap slice.

          • GG says:

            So would I, in theory, but even I can’t eat an entire pizza by myself… Limiting your target customer to people ordering for a group (or, OK, two large and really hungry dudes) is going to unnecessarily limit your customer base, IMHO.

  5. Mike says:

    I’m still not sure how a pizza place can survive there with Arizmendi just around the corner. The best traditional slice in the hood will always be Serrano’s

  6. Sfnola says:

    That location could really use a burrito joint.

  7. ALWAYS HIGH says:

    SHIT WAS EXPENSIVE AND HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KOREAN KISSES. 2/10 WOULD NOT BANG SOBER (0/1 MISSION SCALE).

  8. Not a Transplantsiscan says:

    I went there looking for a slice of pizza and they didn’t sell pizzas by the slice, BIG, BIG mistake… it may be centrification after all, this companies may have a little cash to open restaurants or whatever, and they don’t even take the time to understand the clientele… weird.

  9. SF Venturese says:

    As always there is two sides to every story but when funds are missing from the bank account and cannot be accounted for, it’s time to pull the plug on an idea or person. Yes we also told him to sell slices.