A large red-and-white sign appeared along a busy stretch of Manchester Road on Monday: After 48 years in Rock Hill, the building that’s been home to Hacienda Mexican Restaurant (9748 Manchester) is for sale, and the business is looking to relocate.
Real estate broker Powell Kalish of Hilliker Corporation, who’s handling the sale, tells SLM that the 12,000-square-foot building was originally constructed around 1860, making it one of the oldest structures in the area—a “legacy site,” as he describes it.
Kalish notes that the building will need significant updates if it remains a restaurant. “There’s been some interest in keeping the structure,” he says, “but just as many inquiries from investors looking to redevelop the site.” Leasing is also a possibility, he adds, though “it’s a big building that needs improvements, and those costs would have to be reconciled.”
Restaurant co-owner Alex Rodriguez, who owns both the business and property with her mother, confirmed later in the day that Hacienda intends to relocate, citing a “perfect storm” of challenges that began during the pandemic.
“We thought we’d survived COVID, operating our catering trucks and our little outdoor tents with a small crew, but staffing got harder—which is more of an issue for a restaurant our size—and customers were slow to return,” Rodriguez says. “I feel that two years of roadwork up and down Manchester had a lot to do with that.”
Before the pandemic, business was predictable, day to day, month to month, and year to year. “Now there’s no consistency,” she explains. “It’s hard to prep or staff when trends no longer exist. Everyone in the industry says the last few months have been brutal. All I can say is, ‘I know.’
Rodriguez adds that families have cut back on dining out as prices rise, and alcohol consumption has declined. “That’s concerning when pitchers of margaritas are a big part of your business model and you have 550 seats to fill.”
Maintaining the 150-year-old building has also become a strain. “It’s nonstop maintenance,” Rodriguez says, “and there has been recent pressure to make the space physically more ADA-compliant, even though the building is grandfathered. We’re also up against rising product and labor costs, and insurance that’s tripled in three years.”
In a social media post Monday, Hacienda’s team acknowledged that caring for the 3-acre property “has been both a privilege and a challenge, especially with the way the business expands and contracts moving from the busy summer season to the slower winter season. Every time we make an improvement, there’s something else right behind it that costs twice as much.”
Rodriguez emphasizes that “we are not closing, just relocating.” The social post noted in boldface type that “we want to reassure everyone that the restaurant remains open for the foreseeable future.”
Relocation Plans
Rodriguez says she’d like to find a smaller space” that better suits today’s realities. “Someplace I can be creative and grow—then maybe add more locations later,” she says. “I’m not going to jump into anything, but I am looking.”
Hacienda’s catering and grocery-store lines of chips and salsa will help sustain the business during the transition, she says, but any future site must have oversized kitchen capacity. “I could be happy with a large catering kitchen and a pickup window—or a 150-seat restaurant with event space,” she says. “I just want something manageable and close enough because I still have little kids I need to cater to.”
The Backstory
In 1968, having successfully tested a handful of Mexican dishes at an American diner that he owned in St. Louis, Norberto “Bob” Rodriguez felt confident enough to open Hacienda Restaurant at 2540 Woodson in Overland. At the time, Mexican food was still new to most St. Louis diners, not the ubiquitous juggernaut it is today.
The restaurant moved up Woodson Road in 1972 and relocated to its current location in 1977. The stone building at Manchester was built in 1861 for a steamboat captain, and it became the home of the first mayor of Rock Hill. Prior to Hacienda, it was also home to Parente’s Italian Village, a local pizza and pasta parlor.
Bob’s children, Alex and John Rodriguez, returned from California to take over full-time operations in 2010. The restaurant remains family-owned and dedicated to Bob’s vision of serving authentic Mexican food “in a festive atmosphere with the highest level of hospitality.”
Over the years, the Rodriguez family has expanded the patio—now seating 275—and added a playground in 2023.
In 2016, they opened Mayana Mexican Kitchen, a small, splashy, fast-casual spinoff in Clayton, which closed in early 2020. (BARcelona Tapas Restaurant currently occupies the space.) “We loved Clayton and loved being in Clayton,” Alex said at the time. “We had a strong and growing catering business, but it was the limited seating and the pandemic that did us in. Clayton was a ghost town, and I only had one employee that didn’t have to stay home with kids.”
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