The warning comes from a Big Kitchen employee, who reached out to SanDiegoVille after launching a new $14,000 GoFundMe campaign intended to help keep the restaurant operating, pay staff and address mounting expenses. As of this weekend, the fundraiser had collected only $415 from five donors toward its goal.
"Big Kitchen seems to be on its last legs and I do not see it being open any longer sadly," they told SanDiegoVille.
According to the employee, the restaurant was forced to temporarily close approximately three months ago after several costly problems emerged inside the aging café, most significantly issues involving its refrigeration equipment. The disruption compounded existing financial pressures and left the business behind on numerous expenses, including employee payroll, he said.
The employee said staff members initially tried to remain patient and help the restaurant weather the situation, but months of financial difficulty combined with a decline in customers have made that increasingly difficult.
"We the staff from Big Kitchen were okay with that, but after these months and a drop in customers [we] can no longer help keep the restaurant open like we would prefer," they wrote. "I was hoping if you'd be able to share this with your community, for I no longer know what to do."
SanDiegoVille has not independently reviewed the restaurant's financial records or payroll documentation, and the employee's account of the business's current obligations comes from their experience as an employee. But the newly launched fundraiser itself describes The Big Kitchen as struggling with rising food costs, medical emergencies and other financial challenges that have made keeping the doors open increasingly difficult.
"Like so many small, family-owned restaurants, the past few years have been incredibly tough," the fundraiser states. "Rising food costs, unexpected medical emergencies, and other financial challenges have made it harder than ever to keep the doors open."
The campaign asks supporters to donate, share the fundraiser or simply return for breakfast, describing each as a way to help preserve "the magic of this South Park landmark."
For almost any other restaurant, financial trouble and a malfunctioning refrigerator might amount to another unfortunate chapter in San Diego's brutally difficult hospitality industry. But The Big Kitchen is not just another restaurant.
Forman took over the small Grape Street diner in 1980 after moving to San Diego from Detroit, where she had spent a decade working as a social worker. PBS later described what followed as the transformation of a neighborhood greasy spoon into a "community sanctuary for social justice and activism," attracting artists, politicians, feminists, eccentrics, members of San Diego's LGBTQ+ community and seemingly anyone else who wandered through the door. Over the decades, Forman became nearly inseparable from the restaurant itself.
Long before South Park evolved into one of San Diego's most desirable dining and residential neighborhoods, The Big Kitchen operated as an informal community center where coffee refills were communal, regulars lingered for hours, meals could sometimes be bartered for work and Judy's famously oversized personality was every bit as important as what came out of the kitchen.
A 1986 San Diego Reader profile documented Forman organizing peace marches, raising money for AIDS organizations and environmental groups, supporting local activists and serving as what one neighborhood resident described as a human "clearing-house" connecting people who needed help with people capable of providing it.
Forman eventually dubbed herself the "Mayor of Golden Hill," while her enduring café persona became "Judy the Beauty on Duty." In 2009, the City of San Diego went so far as to proclaim June 29 "Judy 'The Beauty' Forman Day" in recognition of her contributions to the Greater Golden Hill community and San Diego as a whole.
Then there is The Big Kitchen's most famous former employee. Before becoming an EGOT-winning entertainer and international celebrity, Whoopi Goldberg worked as a dishwasher at The Big Kitchen during her years in San Diego's theater scene. The connection has become part of the café's mythology, although Forman has always been quick to make clear that her restaurant's importance was never simply about the celebrities who passed through it.
The Big Kitchen has also earned national attention of its own. Over the years, its eccentric little dining room at 3003 Grape Street has appeared in travel publications and television programs, while generations of San Diegans have known it for enormous breakfasts, walls covered in political and pop-culture memorabilia, communal coffee and a decidedly unpolished atmosphere increasingly rare in modern San Diego. The restaurant's own website still promotes its appearances on Food Network and PBS and lists the Grape Street café as operating from 8am to 2pm.
But the latest crisis is not entirely new. In May 2025, SanDiegoVille reported on another fundraising campaign launched for Forman after serious health and financial problems threatened both her personal stability and the restaurant. That campaign described a heart attack following the pandemic, a difficult recovery and tax problems that had placed significant strain on Forman's finances.
At the time, supporters described The Big Kitchen as an "unofficial social service agency without the benefit of nonprofit status," an unusually accurate summary of a restaurant that has spent much of its existence helping people whether or not doing so made business sense.
More than a year later, the circumstances appear even more precarious. The new fundraiser, titled "Help Judy Keep The Big Kitchen's Magic Alive," was created August 6 and carries a much smaller $14,000 goal. Rather than focusing primarily on Forman's personal financial difficulties, this campaign is explicitly aimed at keeping the restaurant operating, helping pay staff and preserving a South Park institution that has now survived for nearly half a century.
"Known for its old-school diner charm, welcoming atmosphere, and the familiar face of 'Judy the Beauty on Duty,' it's become a place where generations of San Diegans have gathered for good food and great company," the fundraiser reads.
There is an unfortunate symmetry to The Big Kitchen's current predicament. Forman built her reputation in part by running a restaurant that often behaved as though the normal rules of business came second to taking care of people. Former customers and longtime profiles describe meals traded for labor, community fundraisers organized from the café and struggling people being welcomed through the door whether or not they had much money to spend. Now the people who work there are asking San Diego to return some of that generosity.
The potential loss would also arrive at a time when San Diego's independent restaurant landscape is being rapidly reshaped by rising labor and ingredient costs, escalating rents, changing consumer habits and the continuing disappearance of quirky, personality-driven establishments that once defined many of the city's older neighborhoods.
The Big Kitchen is almost the antithesis of a polished restaurant group. It is small, cluttered, intensely personal and built around a woman who has treated the restaurant as an extension of her living room, political clubhouse, social-work office and neighborhood stage for more than 45 years. National Geographic, profiling South Park in 2023, called the café a San Diego landmark and described its walls packed with decades of memorabilia, peace signs, political messages and community history. Whether that history is enough to carry the restaurant through its latest crisis remains uncertain.
The message from an employee suggests employees have reached the point where goodwill alone can no longer sustain the business, particularly if payroll and critical equipment expenses remain unresolved. The current GoFundMe total represents only a fraction of what organizers say is needed.
For now, The Big Kitchen remains one of those increasingly rare places where the story of the restaurant is really the story of the people who have passed through it. Artists found friends there. Activists organized there. Politicians shook hands there. Whoopi Goldberg washed dishes there. Judy Forman spent nearly half a century turning breakfast into an excuse to build community there. And now, after decades of feeding San Diego, the little South Park café is asking whether San Diego is willing to help feed it back.
The Big Kitchen Café is located at 3003 Grape Street in San Diego's South Park neighborhood. Those wishing to support the restaurant can donate to the Help Judy Keep The Big Kitchen's Magic Alive campaign on GoFundMe, share the fundraiser or visit the café while it remains operating.
Originally published on September 6, 2026.
