Range Cafe to close Downtown Albuquerque location

Range Cafe will close its Downtown location more than three months after cutting dinner service across all restaurants.

Operations will cease at the Downtown location at 320 Central SE on Saturday, Dec. 27, the popular local restaurant announced in a social media post this week.

“We’re deeply grateful to our downtown guests and community for the memories made at this location,” the announcement said.

The closure comes as “the potential sale of the Central Avenue building continues to move forward,” according to the post. The Range Cafe’s Downtown building has been on the market since August of last year, said Colliers broker Ben Perich.

The 6,126-square-foot property — which offers restaurant, bar, patio and office space — is available for $2.8 million, a Colliers listing shows.

The building, originally a gas station, housed a restaurant called Standard Diner from 2006 through 2020 before transitioning into a Range Cafe location.

The DiGregory brothers, who are the sole owners of the Downtown location, decided to list the property for sale so one of them could move closer to retirement, a Range Cafe spokesperson said.

The owners were open to staying at the location and leasing it back from a potential buyer, but as time went on, they decided to “take a proactive approach and plan responsibly for a potential transition, rather than risk an abrupt change later,” the spokesperson said.

Perich said no contracts have been signed but signaled that a potential deal is in the works. The owners declined to comment on the details or status of a potential sale of the building.

In the initial announcement, the restaurant said that any of the location’s 20 employees who wish to remain with Range Cafe will still have a place with the company.

The closure comes several weeks after Range Cafe cut dinner service across all locations, citing feedback from patrons, shifting dining and traffic patterns, a decline in tourism, an employee shortage and rising inflation.

Closing the Downtown location is “related only to the building and is not connected to the health of our business,” the owners said. “Range Cafe remains strong, and all our other locations are open and operating at their regular hours.”

Kylie Garcia covers retail and real estate for the Journal. You can reach her at kgarcia@abqjournal.com.