Wow. Rudy’s Cant Fail Cafe Closes In Oakland. This vlogger’s favorite late night breakfast place shut its doors on July 26th 2018. And I found out the hard way: hungry for a Rudy’s Cant Fail Cafe helping of Green Eggs and Ham (not kidding), after attending the TechCrunch August Capital Party in Menlo Park (they only had cheeseburger sliders, and I don’t eat cheese on my sliders, so I passed). I was starving. Rudy’s Cant Fail Cafe In Oakland was right off the 19th Street BART Station exit part of Fox Theater and next to Make Westing Bar, so it was an easy walk. And closed.
A couple of security guard friends of mine told me the shutter was abrupt, and workers were laid off without warning and the culprit was a rumored rent increase on top of the higher minimum wage regulations for 2018 in Oakland.
The Rudy’s folks left a note on the door that reads…
“We are sad to announce that after 7+ years of serving uptown Oakland, Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe is closing its doors. We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to have created a welcoming space for all of the great people who have joined us for breakfast, lunch, dinner, day and night! Rudy’s Oakland last day will be Thursday, July 26. We will be open 7am-3pm. We are also very proud of and thankful to everybody who has served with us along the way. Thanks again to everybody who has been a part of Rudy’s time in Oakland, and if you need your Rudy’s fix, you can still come visit us at our Emeryville location where we will continue to be there for you, just as we have for the last 16 years! Emeryville Hours: 7am – 1am Everyday”
To say that Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe Oakland made the intersection of Telegraph and 18th along with Make Westing is an understatement. Before Phil Tagami redeveloped the Fox Theater as the fee developer for the City of Oakland, that space Rudy’s was in was an adult film store with boarded up windows. You didn’t know what was going on.
When I was intern to the Oakland Redevelopment Agency in 1987, my boss Jeff Chew and I took a visit to that space, and to the then run-down and closed Fox Theater. A vastly different world there today.
Wow. I’m going to miss Rudy’s in Oakland. I wonder if they will come back?
I have a lot of videos and stories from Rudy’s Cant Fail Cafe Oakland . I was even given a hoodie! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtnEiL_xdaU&list=PLn9uSzzpCuin6vZRHqayWHl4GxyBYeyCa
The fact is the combination of high rents and a wage law not tied to what small businesses can afford to pay will ruin independent local restaurants and retailers in Oakland. Max’s City Center closed and now Rudy’s and there may be others I’m not informed about for this post. But I do know business owners in Oakland complain to me about it all the time. They’re just trying to make ends meet. Oakland has no program to provide grants to businesses – but it should have one. That keeps people employed.
Stay tuned.
Oakland News Now Note: this post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest version of an experimental mobile media video-blogging system network that’s part of Zennie62Media. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 onYouTube channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site. The objective is real-time on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network and also seek interested content and media technology partners.