Red Cow Flips Its Last Uptown Burger as June 1 Lease Ends

A decade on Hennepin ends June 1

After 10 years in Uptown, the Hennepin Avenue location of Red Cow will flip its last burger on June 1, when the restaurant's lease comes to an end. The closure of the 2626 Hennepin Ave. spot removes one of the corridor's better-known gathering places, a burgers-and-craft-beer room that helped define casual dining on the avenue over the past decade.

Owner Luke Shimp said the decision was largely lease-driven, but framed it against a brutal stretch of business. Sales had largely rebounded after the early pandemic years, he said, then dropped 60 to 70 percent once construction on Hennepin began in 2024 and dragged on.

Construction, then a lease that didn't pencil out

For a restaurant built on walk-in traffic and a steady bar crowd, a two-year disruption out front is close to an existential threat. When the sidewalks are fenced and the avenue is a single lane of detours, the spontaneous stop-in that fills tables on a weeknight largely disappears — and the volume a place like Red Cow needs to clear rent and payroll goes with it.

Shimp told local outlets that employees from the Uptown location would be moved to the chain's other restaurants, sparing staff the worst of the shutdown. Red Cow operates several locations across the Twin Cities, and the company has emphasized that the Uptown closing is a single-store decision rather than a retreat from the market.

Sales had come back, and then the street work cut them by two-thirds. A lease renewal on top of that just didn't make sense.— summarizing owner Luke Shimp's account of the closure

Another name on a growing list

The closing arrived as part of a steady drumbeat of Uptown departures. The president of the Uptown Business Association said more than 60 businesses have closed along the south Minneapolis corridor in recent years, and pointed to the new Hennepin Avenue layout and the long construction period as central causes. Red Cow's exit, announced within weeks of other longtime Uptown closures, became shorthand in a citywide conversation about the district's health.

Boosters counter that the losses, while real, mask a slower turnover: new operators and redevelopment projects are moving into the corridor even as familiar names leave. That is cold comfort to regulars who marked birthdays and Friday nights at the Uptown Red Cow, but it frames the closure as a chapter ending rather than a verdict on the neighborhood.