San Francisco food hall Saluhall hasn’t exactly had it easy over the past few months, from losing vendors to parting ways with its management company. But now, the Ikea-adjacent food hall is looking to turn over a new leaf with the announcement of a new bar operator. Spirited Beverage Co., the beverage arm of Bay Area hospitality collective Always Fishing Hospitality Group, is slated to take over all three bars in the two-story food hall.
“This project is about creating a place that feels like it belongs to the city,” said John Silva, founder and CEO of Always Fishing Hospitality Group, in a news release. “We’ve spent years building systems that support great hospitality at scale, now we get to bring that same level of care, intention, and accessibility into a space people can return to every day.”
Always Fishing Hospitality Group operates catering and event companies, including Culinary Eye Catering & Events, Metal & Match Catering Co., BarCar Events, and Spirited Beverage Co., but Spirited at Saluhall will be its first permanent, public-facing endeavor. Silva, who is from the Bay Area, worked as a catering chef for over a decade and as an instructional chef at Sur La Table before founding his own catering company, Culinary Eye, in 2010, per his LinkedIn.
Always Fishing beverage director Austin Klein will lead the beverage program at Saluhall. Klein has a background as the general manager of BarCar, a mobile beverage caterer that pour drinks out of restored vintage Airstreams, and grew up in San Francisco — fittingly, just blocks from the food hall…