Sacramento nonprofit restaurant closing after 46 years of supporting at-risk kids

Casa Garden had a mission and scale unmatched by any Sacramento-area restaurant. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it quietly slipped away.

The Los Niños Service League’s board of director voted 11-1 Monday to permanently close Casa Garden, which has sat empty at 2760 Sutterville Rd. since the coronavirus pandemic began last March.

It was the end of a historic run and one of the city’s preeminent examples of successful nonprofit fundraising and outreach. Since Casa Garden’s founding in 1974 under the name “Casa De Los Niños,” all profits and tips — more than $3 million in total — went to the Sacramento Children’s Home, with which the restaurant shared a campus.

Casa Garden’s six employees were flanked by 250 Los Niños volunteers who cooked, served, trimmed shrubbery and kept books for nothing more than internal satisfaction. Meals and banquets funded programs like crisis nurseries, violence intervention education and intensive residential therapy for traumatized boys.

“The mission was to support the Children’s Home and they have probably done that more than they ever expected,” Children’s Home CEO David Baker said. “When they opened in 1974, folks here at the time had doubts about whether it would work out. They couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Many Children’s Home services are inherently shrouded in confidentiality to protect those involved. The classic food for a good cause at Casa Garden, meanwhile, was great public relations for the nonprofit, said Los Niños Service League past president and current board member Carol Williams.

Williams was a Los Niños charter member in May 1974, when the nonprofit restaurant led by Janet Schei opened with one lunch item per day. A Children’s Home board member asked if his granddaughter could be married there a few years later, opening the floodgates for other private events that would became Casa Garden’s main revenue source.

White-collar customers nibbled on chicken cordon bleu or Southeast Asian-inspired salads while gazing out floor-to-ceiling windows at the property’s expansive gardens. Lawyers’ associations and retiring state managers frequently rented out Casa Garden’s two dining rooms, outdoor patio or 125-person meeting center for their parties, and Williams said she oversaw roughly 35-40 weddings per year at one point.

“I’m a little sad, but also very proud that we lasted this long. Not many restaurants last this many years,” Williams said.

But social distancing requirements ground those events ground to a halt, taking most of Casa Garden’s revenue with them, Los Niños president Marilyn Ferris Steed said. And while Casa Garden didn’t pay rent to the Children’s Home, it was still on the hook for utilities, repairs and the six employees, who were paid for a few months before being laid off.

An aging volunteer base proved problematic as well. Roughly a third of Casa Garden’s volunteers said they wouldn’t be able to return to roles such as gardeners, cooks and servers after the pandemic, including a few key helpers who moved away, Ferris Steed said.

Casa Garden existed to serve the Children’s Home, Ferris Steed said, and money that could have benefited kids and families in need was redirected to pay bills as the pandemic dragged on. Add in a shrinking volunteer corps, rising costs of doing business and the pandemic’s unknown end date, and the hill appeared too steep to climb.

“We were spending quite a bit of money to keep everything intact, and decided we would rather donate what we had to the home, proudly close and remember how wonderful it was,” Ferris Steed said. “It just became overwhelming. There were too many facets, too many things to overcome.”

Children’s Home leaders have yet to discuss what might replace Casa Garden, Baker said. The restaurant’s 2020 cookbook remains available for $25 online at https://checkout.square.site/buy/UKFE7KQJVTXTSFQJI3LG5AII.

“I don’t go anywhere in Sacramento without running into someone who says ‘My grandma volunteered there’ or ‘My mother volunteered there,’” Baker said. “It’s been such a tradition there for almost 50 years. It’s going to be hard to replace the stewardship they had feeding folks over there.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 6:55 AM.