The family-operated restaurant will serve its final meals at Grossmont Center on August 26, giving owner Victor Gamboa and his team only weeks to find a new location before losing the storefront that transformed El Veganito from a small local venture into one of the region’s best-known plant-based Mexican restaurants.
Gamboa said he and other food court tenants were recently notified that their agreements would end and that they must vacate the property by late August. The news came abruptly, leaving the restaurant without a replacement space, a firm relocation plan or any certainty about when it will reopen.
“This was unexpected, and honestly, we don’t know yet what comes next,” El Veganito announced on social media.
The restaurant is now asking customers, commercial landlords and members of San Diego’s restaurant industry for leads on a small kitchen, food counter or other affordable space where the business could continue operating. Although El Veganito intends to return, its immediate future remains uncertain.
Gamboa has operated El Veganito for nearly a decade, with the Grossmont Center food court serving as its permanent home for the past six years. The restaurant specializes in entirely plant-based interpretations of familiar Mexican comfort food, offering items such as tacos, burritos, quesadillas, loaded fries and other dishes traditionally centered on meat and dairy. Its accessible counter-service format helped the business reach diners beyond the relatively narrow audience often associated with vegan restaurants.
For Gamboa, the closure is not merely the loss of a retail lease. El Veganito supports his family and represents years of work building a recognizable local brand. He said his first thoughts after receiving notice were about how his family would continue paying its household expenses while the restaurant searches for another home.
That urgency illustrates the less glamorous side of major retail redevelopment. Large projects are often announced through renderings, job estimates and promises of revitalization, but the transition can be far more destabilizing for small businesses already operating on the property.
El Veganito is one of several food court vendors reportedly being displaced as Grossmont Center prepares for its next phase. The closures are tied to the planned arrival of Bass Pro Shops, which confirmed earlier this month that it will open a massive 148,000-square-foot store at Grossmont Center in 2028.
The outdoor retail destination will replace the former Macy’s building on the southwest side of the property, but the project’s footprint will extend beyond the vacant department store and into the area currently occupied by the food court. That expansion explains why businesses that may appear geographically separate from Macy’s are now being asked to leave.
La Mesa Mayor Mark Arapostathis said the new Bass Pro Shops is expected to attract visitors, create jobs and encourage other businesses to invest in the area. The retailer’s arrival is being positioned as a centerpiece of Grossmont Center’s broader revival.
The long-term economic argument is easy to understand. Bass Pro Shops stores frequently operate as regional attractions rather than conventional retailers, combining enormous merchandise selections with elaborate wildlife displays, aquariums and immersive design. A store of this size could draw customers from throughout San Diego County and neighboring regions.
But the benefits remain years away, while the disruption to existing tenants is immediate. Bass Pro Shops is not expected to open until 2028. El Veganito, meanwhile, must leave by August 26, 2026. That gap potentially creates a prolonged period in which established local businesses are displaced well before the replacement attraction begins serving customers or producing the promised economic activity.
Grossmont Center has entered a period of rapid transition under Federal Realty Investment Trust, which acquired a controlling interest in the longtime La Mesa shopping center and has been pursuing a multi-phase modernization strategy. The redevelopment is intended to update the property with redesigned storefronts, improved landscaping, new public gathering areas, contemporary restaurants and major entertainment and retail anchors.
Several longtime tenants have already disappeared. Reading Cinemas recently closed its Grossmont Center theater, although AMC Theatres plans to renovate and reopen the movie complex in 2027. Macy’s also shuttered, creating the large vacancy that will become Bass Pro Shops.
The property’s reinvention reflects the broader struggle facing traditional shopping centers. Department stores and conventional mall tenants have declined, pushing owners toward experiential businesses capable of attracting customers who might otherwise shop online.
Bass Pro Shops fits that strategy almost perfectly. So do movie theaters, restaurants, fitness operators and other destinations that cannot be easily replicated through e-commerce.
Yet redevelopment also creates winners and losers. National anchors receive the space, investment and publicity needed to reshape a property, while smaller tenants can find themselves displaced by plans they had little role in creating.
Arapostathis said Grossmont Center’s ownership has been speaking with affected businesses about possible new leases and attempting to retain tenants that want to remain at the shopping center. It is unclear whether El Veganito has been offered a viable alternative location within the property or whether any proposed space would meet the restaurant’s operational and financial needs.
Not every vacant storefront can function as a restaurant. Food businesses require specialized ventilation, grease interceptors, plumbing, electrical capacity, permits and kitchen infrastructure that make relocation considerably more complicated than moving an ordinary retail shop. Even when a landlord offers another unit, the cost of constructing a new kitchen can be prohibitive for a small family business. El Veganito’s appeal for leads suggests no suitable solution has yet been secured.
“My hope is to find a place that we feel that we can start over and feel safe, and where we can just continue what we have been building here,” Gamboa said.
The closure comes during an especially challenging period for independent vegan restaurants in San Diego. Plant-based concepts can develop extremely loyal followings, but they also operate within a limited market and face the same rising food, labor, rent and insurance costs affecting the wider restaurant industry. Relocation can be particularly dangerous because much of a restaurant’s value is tied to routine, convenience and established customer traffic.
El Veganito’s Grossmont Center location offered parking, freeway access and a built-in audience of mall employees, shoppers and moviegoers. A new space may provide an opportunity to grow, but it could also require the business to rebuild its customer base almost from scratch.
At the same time, the circumstances differ from a conventional restaurant failure. El Veganito is not announcing that demand disappeared or that it voluntarily chose to shut down. It is being removed because the physical space is being absorbed into a redevelopment project. That distinction matters.
The closure is less a verdict on El Veganito’s viability than a reminder that even successful neighborhood businesses remain vulnerable when the land beneath them becomes more valuable for a different purpose.
Longtime customers have begun expressing sadness and frustration over the announcement, describing Gamboa and his family as hardworking operators who have become fixtures at the mall. Customer Dustin Halnez told media that Gamboa and his brother had spent years making food and supporting their family through the business.
“They’re just such good people,” Halnez said.
El Veganito has expanded its operating schedule during its final weeks and will now open on Mondays, encouraging supporters to visit before the Grossmont Center location closes. The restaurant’s final month will therefore function as both a farewell and a fundraising lifeline. Every order could help support employees, cover relocation expenses and buy the business more time to identify a new home.
Grossmont Center’s transformation may ultimately bring meaningful investment to La Mesa. Bass Pro Shops is expected to create more than 150 jobs, AMC will return moviegoing to the property, and future redevelopment could restore activity to sections of the shopping center that have struggled for years.
Still, “revitalization” can sound cleaner and less disruptive than it is. In practice, it means walls coming down, leases ending and businesses that survived the mall’s declining years being told they no longer fit within its future footprint.
El Veganito helped keep the Grossmont Center food court active before Bass Pro Shops was announced and before national attention returned to the property. Now, as the shopping center prepares for its next era, the small business must scramble to preserve what it built there.
The restaurant plans to close at Grossmont Center on August 26 but continues searching for another location in San Diego County. Anyone with information about a suitable restaurant space or food counter is being asked to contact El Veganito through its social media accounts.
For now, the business is not saying goodbye permanently. It is simply being forced to leave before it knows where it will go next.
El Veganito is located inside Grossmont Center at 5500 Grossmont Center Drive in La Mesa. For more information, visit @elveganitosd on Instagram.
Originally published on July 12, 2026.
