After less than two months in business, Grand Fare Market on Grand Avenue in Oakland has closed. It was a pet project of Town Hall/Salt House partner Doug Washington and his wife Freye Prowe, who have been working on the hybrid market hall concept for a couple of years now. It's been a work in progress with the adjacent outdoor area opening first, with a coffee truck in an Airstream trailer that also dispensed Humphry Slocombe ice cream.

The enormous 8,000-square-foot market sold wine, cheese, charcuterie, and oysters, in addition to sandwiches and salads and rotisserie dinner items like whole Piri Piri chickens, and just debuted in early October. Inside Scoop posted a photo of the first sign on the door, saying "closed until further notice."

In a message posted on Twitter, Washington and Prowe say they'll be re-envisioning the concept in the new year, and obviously they have to after such significant investment in the handsome buildout. The note says in part that the operating costs were simply too high, "and we can't keep it going."

This was, easily, the quickest case of open-and-shut in the local food realm this year, but it does sound as though it won't be a permanent closure.