Pop-up indoor food, craft market coming to downtown Modesto restaurant’s banquet hall
Combine the variety of an outdoor market with the convenience of an indoor food court and the owner of downtown Modesto’s Monsoon Restaurant hopes to have a hit on his hands.
Chef and owner Gurinder S. Khaira (known as “Binny” to friends) plans to turn the attached banquet room for his 11th Street restaurant into an all-weather food and craft market. Khaira, who has owned and operated Monsoon Indian restaurant since 2018, said the 6,000-square-foot space hasn’t attracted enough business — thanks in part to the stiff competition from two other banquet rooms just across the street.
So instead, he plans to create a seven-days-a-week pop-up indoor market that he hopes to fill with food, drink and craft vendors. The cavernous space, which was once part of the Palladium Nightclub, will switch from hosting weddings and parties to pouring craft beer, serving pizza and offering a host of other options.
He said he was inspired in part by the success of the nearby Modesto Grub Hubs food truck court at Ninth and G streets and other popular events like the Modesto Certified Farmers Market and DoMo First Friday Night Market.
“Grub Hubs is doing so well there are no spaces available,” he said. “And this would be indoors and have a lot of advantages over that, which depends on the weather. It’s a unique idea and I don’t think anyone is doing this here.”
Khaira is advertising now for vendors to lease space inside the banquet hall, and has already fielded around half a dozen interest calls. He said the space should fit about a dozen booths, including three vendors to fill a larger existing bar space and the rest smaller vendors in individual, pop-up six-foot-by-six foot spaces.
His hope is to attract a full-time pizza vendor, coffee company and craft beer seller to the larger spaces, and then fill the rest with a diverse group of other merchants.
In the back of the long space, he wants to put ping pong tables, arcade games and other activities for people to enjoy while at the market. The center of the hall will have a long community table for dining and hanging out. He also wants to host live music regularly in the space, which would be open until the evening hours weekdays and late night on the weekends to attract the bar crowd.
To make his vision a reality, Khaira will stop booking his banquet space after this Saturday, Feb. 15, to work full-time on the indoor market. He has set an aggressive schedule and hopes to have it launched by as early as mid-March if possible.
He said interested vendors would have the use of his larger commercial kitchen for the restaurant. A separate commercial kitchen in the banquet hall would be dedicated to the pizza vendor, or whatever major food seller he finds to take over one of the larger spaces.
The small booth sellers would be able to use his kitchen, and also have their own water stations at their booths. While they wouldn’t have direct oven/stovetop access in the booths, Khaira said, they could use possibly the restaurant kitchen if needed.
Khaira is asking $1,000 a month for the mall vendors and $1,800 for the large vendors, though he said various fees and services are all negotiable at this point. Electricity, water, kitchen access, janitorial service and security would all be included in the rental terms.
If the idea takes off, he plans to close his attached Monsoon Restaurant. Since opening just under two years ago, Khaira has been its primary chef, and he said the daily grind of running a restaurant has taken its toll on him. But he plans to keep the catering side of the business running regardless.
For purely selfish reasons, I hope he keeps Monsoon open at least a while longer as it has one of the absolute best lunch buffets in all of Modesto — plus it’s one of only two Indian restaurants in the city right now.
As for what Khaira would like to see come into the space, he said he’d love to see a ramen or poke booth to open shop inside. He also said baked goods sellers like cookies, cupcakes or doughnuts would work well in the space. Craft vendors, artists and others are also welcome.
Khaira said he plans to build uniform-looking modular booth spaces for each vendor — so it should look more pulled together than just a bunch of folding tables and pop-up tents.
“This would be a good starter for people. It’s cheaper than opening up your own food truck, and a good way to see if people like your food,” he said.
If interested in one of the booth/vendor spaces, contact Khaira via text at 209-321-4339. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/monsoonmodesto.
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
