Christmas Eve is the last day to receive Godfather and Fatboy sandwiches from The Original Rinaldi’s Café and Deli—at least in Manhattan Beach.
Owners Laura Ping Chen and Bill Chen will end the deli’s 12-year run and permanently close the eatery’s doors, 350 N Sepulveda Blvd., on Friday, December 24, to make way for a senior living facility .
The chain has served Italian deli sandwiches and salads in the South Bay for more than 25 years and will continue to do so: two other delis, one on El Segundo’s Main Street and the other on Century Boulevard near LAX, will remain open.
But a Sunrise Senior Assisted Living community will replace Goat Hill Shopping Center, where Manhattan Beach Deli is located, within the next few years.
However, the chains are yet to be dropped. Tenants will get 60-day notice next fall — in October — warning them that the building will be torn down in December 2022, landlord Stuart Sackley said by phone on Tuesday, December 14. Construction on the senior home is scheduled to begin in January 2023. ,
Initially, retailers were slated for the project to go out in late 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic has put the plan on hold for now.
But Laura Ping Chen, who runs the daily with her husband, said she doesn’t want to wait for a move-out date and then have to tell her employees at the last minute that they need to find a new job. ,
“Now I have less staff; We couldn’t hang on,” Chen said. “So we decided to go first.”
Many longtime customers shared their disappointment, Chen said.
“We’ve seen an entire generation feed on their own food,” Chen said. “Even during COVID when we were operating at 20% (pre-pandemic trading levels), the idea of shutting down never crossed our mind.”
Chen said founder Michael Rinaldi sold the business to the couple 26 years ago. Rinaldi opened the original restaurant in Hermosa Beach nearly 30 years ago, the chain said, sold it a year later and opened the longest-running location on Main Street in El Segundo, which the chain began running after buying the business.
“We made it our mom-and-pop shop,” Chen said.
Chen opened Rinaldi’s in Manhattan Beach 12 years ago, Chen said, and in 2017 on Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport, when she learned her second location would be closing for a senior home. He heard mention of the redevelopment of the plaza in 2016, she said, and quickly began looking for another location.
Two months ago, they began closing Rinaldi’s Manhattan Beach on Mondays and Tuesdays to remain stable, Chen said.
Losing one store will certainly hurt financially, the chain said, but reopening a third location, consolidating resources, bringing in more employees to the other two delis and gaining more customers there is the most important. It’s good.
The chain said employees would pack the meats and vacate the restaurant a week after Christmas.
Sackley said new potential tenants, meanwhile, want to rent out Rinaldi’s storefront as soon as possible for eight months or so until construction on Sunrise is done. This will allow a new tenant to test their customer base in Manhattan Beach before opening a permanent location in the city.
Sackley also said he is looking to buy a two-to-three-unit building in the beach town, which will house the Plaza’s other shops — Two Guns Espresso, Lucifer’s Pizza and another potential tenant — due to the closure of Goat Hill. Can proceed after that.
But for the next week and a half, Chen said, Rinaldi’s will still bake bread every morning, wishing Manhattan Beach customers a happy holiday — and thanking them for a dozen years of preservation.
