10/20/2025
Here is the official statement from The Farmacy (Albuquerque):
Albuquerque restaurant The Farmacy Coffee Shop LLC filed for emergency bankruptcy. This is a separate LLC with a different ownership structure from the San Diego location known as "The Farmacy".
Because of things beyond our control, the filing had to be made on October 14th, 2025. For those who may have gone through that before, you know that declaring bankruptcy is a difficult and demoralizing process which instantly erased the value of everything we have put into the business over the last decade, including all of our personal funds. It was an emergency decision that had to be made. Unfortunately, it happened to fall in the middle of a payroll cycle. My bankruptcy attorneys informed me that I could not legally issue checks to my employees for that pay period. The bankruptcy court assigned a third-party trustee to the business as soon as it was filed, and this is the person who now controls any and all of The Farmacy Coffee Shop LLC's assets. We no longer have any control whatsoever of any of the LLC's assets, and to distribute funds on our own accord would be illegal. We have to follow the legal protocol and allow this third-party trustee to allocate assets to anyone who is owed compensation from the LLC. We informed all of our staff of this in writing and made sure we got them the documents they needed for their records. If it were up to us, we would have processed the final payroll cycle, and the employees would have been issued checks as per usual. But unfortunately, that is not legal protocol when it comes to bankruptcy court in the state of New Mexico.
Mary and I moved to San Diego in 2020 to be closer to my kids. They are the single most important thing to me in this life. Eventually, in July of 2023, we secured a lease on a property for a restaurant here. Our plan of opening a restaurant in San Diego was very public knowledge, as we posted about it on our Albuquerque instagram. The plan was to run both locations in tandem. However, in San Diego, our permitting process was severely mishandled by various city agencies, which caused our opening to be delayed for over two years. With no return on investment on a leased property in downtown San Diego, our funds were rapidly depleting. We managed to finally get the location open only recently, and hoped that would help to carry both projects along. However, the revenues from Albuquerque had begun to steadily decline after Mary and I moved away, as did the level of care and attention put into each and every detail about The Farmacy that made it such a beloved place for so many years. While our staff did a wonderful job on day to day operations, ultimately there are just too many responsibilities that go along with operating a business to make that feasible. So, for years I have traveled from San Diego to Albuquerque every 10 days to check in on the restaurant and try to keep the ship steered in the right direction. This was also a heavy financial strain. But, since we are now working in the new restaurant six days a week, this has made it much more difficult to run a business in a different state with the level of control that it needs to flourish. While we tried to make ends meet and hold out for as long as possible it very suddenly became evident that the Albuquerque location was no longer financially viable. Hence the bankruptcy. There were other contributing factors to the closure as well, such as the skyrocketing costs of goods, for example. So in summary, the required parties weighed our options and found this the best route to take. It was a difficult decision, and because of circumstances, had to be made much more abruptly than we would have hoped.
Regarding the lawsuit brought against The Farmacy in Albuquerque, it is tough to know what we are legally able to say about the details in this case. What we will say is that we have been involved in a lawsuit for over 2 years. After seeing the claims being brought against us, we felt very strongly that we had more than sufficient evidence to disprove them, and this is something we still maintain. We believe that had we gone to trial, which we were actively preparing for, we likely would have had a favorable outcome. However, the cost of long-term litigation is something that can have the potential to cripple big businesses and does even more catastrophic damage to small mom-and-pop shops. In summary, this was another financial burden that we weathered as long as we could, and left us without the funds to proceed with the Albuquerque Farmacy.
The Farmacy in Albuquerque has always strived to look out for our community because our community has always rallied around us when we needed it in the past. We have paid for a regular customer's funeral after finding out she had just passed away, we have helped an employee pay for the process of achieving her citizenship, and we've held multiple fundraisers over the years for causes that are very important to us. We have always tried to go out of our way to take care of our employees and help ease hardships in their lives, so it is definitely heartbreaking to hear about some of the allegations people are making on social media that would indicate otherwise if taken at face value. But that's the thing about allegations, they are allegations, not facts. After doing business in Albuquerque for the better part of a decade, The Farmacy, just like most other businesses, has accumulated some former staff members who did not leave on the best of terms and have chosen to misrepresent the circumstances regarding their termination. This is unfortunate, but we feel glad to have the majority of previous staff members who would not agree with how we are being represented by some. The Farmacy maintains that it has never fired anybody in any way or for any reason that is inconsistent with what is professional and allowed by law in the state of New Mexico. Any termination has always been made with the best interests of the staff, the customers, and the business as a whole in mind. But of course, that doesn't mean that individuals won't sometimes still feel scorned by it.
We believe that any of the allegations or rumors that have so far been made about us or the business lack merit and proof, and we would hope that anyone seeing them would consider this when choosing where their opinion might fall on the matter. We have mostly stopped reading comments, as some are deeply personally upsetting, and we cannot address each and every commenter making incorrect assertions that know at most only bits and pieces of the reality of why we chose to close the doors of the Albuquerque restaurant and in what way we went about doing that. It has gotten to the point where individuals we have never had any association with are sending threatening and absurd messages to family members after developing an opinion on a matter they don't have all of the facts on. We also feel that anyone who wants more clarity on the situation is more than welcome to ask us personally. We are more than happy to be transparent about it, so that informed opinions can be developed. We will not be engaging in conversations that are hostile and accusatory, but are happy to answer questions posed for clarity.
As anyone who has ever owned, or known someone who owned a restaurant, it is a grueling, endlessly stressful endeavor with razor thin margins that keep shrinking all the time.You should not operate a restaurant with the expectation to become wealthy, you do it because you love it. We loved The Farmacy. We loved our customers, but sadly, we had to let it go.
