That San Francisco Restaurant With NFT Memberships Isn’t Happening After All
San Francisco was primed to get its first NFT members club and restaurant this year. Those plans, however, have been quashed.
Sho Club, intended to be a Japanese fine-dining restaurant and hangout in Salesforce Park, is no longer happening, SFGate reported last week. Both Sho Group CEO Joshua Sigel and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which manages the area, confirmed the news to the outlet.
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“We have reached the difficult conclusion that bringing SHO to life atop Salesforce Park is not possible at this time,” Sigel wrote in an email. “Despite a strong demand for the concept with millions of dollars in both pre-sold and reserved memberships (despite multiple requests for refunds due to job uncertainty or loss), we ultimately could not address the many concerns brought about by potential investors, most of which have been around the future of SF and the rising costs of constructing the restaurant.”
The restaurant would have been open to non-members, but Sho Club was largely predicated on its NFT-based membership structure. Back in June 2022, when the establishment was announced, it planned to sell 3,265 memberships, ranging in price from $7,500 to $300,000, with various perks as you moved up the tiers. Sigel wouldn’t tell SFGate how many memberships had been sold before the club was scrapped, but he did say that the full cost had been reimbursed.
While Sigel previously told journalists that the venue was slated to open this fall, Sho Group terminated its lease in July, SFGate noted. Since then, the building has remained empty, including ground-floor spaces where the company was planning to open Sho Market, which has also fallen through.
“The TJPA has agreed to part ways with Sho Group and are turning our attention to engaging the community and our real estate professionals to identify the highest and best use of these three spaces,” a Transbay Authority spokesperson told SFGate. (The authority did not respond to the outlet’s further requests for more information.)
The San Francisco outpost was meant to be the flagship location of Sho Club, which would then expand to other cities, and it’s unclear whether the group still plans to open the members club in some form. While those sorts of private clubs are still having a moment, we’ve long since moved past the days of peak NFT.
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