The first time Kevin Fink walked through the vacant glass factory, a 1948 brick industrial building bought by the Pearl owners in 2015, he knew what it was meant to become.
“I said, ‘Wow, this just feels so great in here,’” Fink said. “It just felt so natural to that space and what was needed and where it was.”
Later this month, Fink and his partners at Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group will open Pullman Market in the former Samuels Glass Co. headquarters at the Pearl.
The new 40,000-square-foot market located at 221 Newell Ave. between the Can Plant Residences and the San Antonio River Walk will feature a specialty grocer, a whole-animal butcher, a sourdough bakery and chef supply shop. The market will also have five quick-service eateries and four distinct restaurants.
In all, there will be about 150 vendors supplying Pullman Market with fresh produce, meats, cheeses and other items, Fink said.
It’s been about 18 months since the Pearl’s development arm Oxbow began the work to turn the factory into Fink’s vision, a project estimated at almost $30 million, according to state filings.
A farm-to-market grocery store is a mostly new concept for San Antonio, one that Fink is gratified has been embraced before even before opening day.
“Whenever you have a vision of something, you really want people to be captured by it,” he said. “People coming from normal retail are like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ and people from restaurants, it just makes sense to them.”
Story about food
Fink, 39, is an experienced chef and also CEO of Emmer & Rye Hospitality, which shares a name with the highly acclaimed Austin restaurant that he opened in 2015.
But the Tuscon, Ariz., native got his start as a dishwasher when he was only 14 years old. At an early age, the camaraderie of the kitchen lured Fink into a 26-year career in the food and beverage business.
In 2006, Fink and his father opened a farm-to-table restaurant, and in 2011, wanting to learn more, he went to work at what was then the world’s most famous restaurant, French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.
“I think food for me is just a lifelong love affair where the more that I learned about it, the more I’m intrigued by it,” he said.
About 10 years ago, Fink and his wife visited cities throughout the U.S., looking for the right place to open a restaurant.
Austin won out over places like San Francisco, New York City and Denver, he said, because it was close to extended family but also offered unique opportunity.
“We wanted to be a part of a community that really was growing but also was supportive of food and cared about food,” Fink said. “I think Texas, not just Austin, but Texas really shined amongst all those things because everyone that we talked to had a story about food — whether it was barbecue or farming or coffee.”
In 2020, Fink was nominated by the James Beard Foundation for Best Chef in Texas.
In addition to Emmer & Rye, Fink is now chef and owner of Austin restaurants Hestia, Kalimotxo, Canje and Ezov.
While on that decade-ago road trip, the Finks also drove to San Antonio and made the stop at the Pearl which kick-started his imagination of Pullman Market. “We were trying to learn as much as we could about Texas,” he said.
In San Antonio, his restaurant group opened Ladino at the Pearl in 2022 and Henbit in the Pearl’s food hall in 2023. The group announced its plans for Pullman Market in December.
Broader scale
Fink believes both his team of partners and chefs who are experts in curating a quality dining experience and the city of San Antonio are ready for the Pullman Market concept.
“In this scenario, we’re just really doing all the things that we have done [in a restaurant] but on a broader scale — because we bake bread in all the restaurants and we butcher animals and bring in the best produce,” he said.
He compared Pullman Market to the Italian marketplace franchise Eataly, but “instead … it’s around Texas food and local agriculture,” he said.
The market will offer a greater selection than the typical farmer’s market, he said, and give farmers a stable space to market their goods without leaving their fields unattended to sell the wares themselves.
Fink believes the city is ripe for Pullman Market.
“San Antonio is such a food-driven city and a hospitality-driven city and a community-driven city and that’s our ideals,” he said. “Our ideals are about community and actually being there for people … it’s about literally having the best quality that we can.”
