For years, if you lived in Elk Grove and wanted a Yard House happy hour or a Mendocino Farms sandwich on a Tuesday night, you drove. Folsom, Roseville, Arden. That trip is over. The Village retail center at Elk Grove Boulevard and Big Horn has started opening in phases through 2026, and the effect on where residents actually spend a Saturday is bigger than any single ribbon cutting suggests. The center of gravity for eating out in Elk Grove is moving south of Laguna Boulevard, and it happened fast.
Here is what is actually open right now, what is coming in the next few weeks, and how the rest of the year's openings across town fit around it.
The Village, tenant by tenant
The Village is planned as roughly 110,000 square feet of new retail, dining and grocery space, with Whole Foods as the anchor tenant, along with Mendocino Farms, Yard House, Shake Shack, Philz Coffee and an additional Chick-fil-A location. Barnes & Noble was added to the incoming tenant list in a November announcement.
The doors that are already open:
- Chick-fil-A at 8140 Elk Grove Blvd. A new Chick-fil-A restaurant began serving the Elk Grove community at its newest location on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, run by local owner-operator Kyle Atwater, who also runs the Elk Grove Marketplace location.
- Yard House at 8190 Elk Grove Blvd. Yard House celebrated the grand opening of its newest restaurant at 8190 Elk Grove Blvd. on June 22, becoming among the first businesses to open at The Village retail center at Elk Grove and Big Horn boulevards. It is Yard House's fourth in the Sacramento region, joining restaurants in Downtown Sacramento, Roseville and Folsom.
- Mendocino Farms. Other businesses that have recently opened at the center include Chick-fil-A, SchoolsFirst Credit Union and Mendocino Farms, which also celebrated its grand opening June 22.
- Shake Shack at 8150 Elk Grove Blvd, Suite 110. The new Shake Shack restaurant will open at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, August 5. It will be the brand's 53rd location in the state of California. Located at 8150 Elk Grove Blvd, Suite 110, the restaurant will serve guests from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and till midnight on Friday and Saturday. Opening day includes a $1 donation for each sandwich sold at the new restaurant to the Elk Grove Food Bank Services.
Whole Foods, Philz, NuYo Frozen Yogurt and Barnes & Noble are still on the come. Watch for phased openings through the back half of the year.
The "we used to drive for this" test
A shopping-center roundup is only interesting if it changes something. Look at the four names above and ask which of them a longtime Elk Grove resident had to leave town for as recently as last spring.
All four.
That is the story worth telling. Yard House's nearest locations were in Roseville, Folsom, and downtown. Mendocino Farms required a trip to Folsom, Land Park, Arden, or Roseville, since nearby Mendocino Farms locations sat in Arden-Arcade, Davis, Folsom, Land Park, Roseville, and Vacaville. Shake Shack has been a Bay Area and downtown Sacramento errand. Even Chick-fil-A, already present at Elk Grove Marketplace, doubled up for a reason: the drive-through queues on Laguna were long enough to justify a second store on the south side of town.
That is not a coincidence of leasing. It is a signal. When a chain like Yard House opens its fourth regional restaurant and picks Elk Grove for a design pilot, it is placing a bet on foot traffic it expects to arrive. General manager Matt Russell told the Elk Grove Citizen that Elk Grove's continued growth and its "up-and-coming DNA" made the city an ideal location for the restaurant's newest expansion. The proof of that bet: the Elk Grove Yard House is debuting a new beer garden concept for the chain. The outdoor space features synthetic turf, picnic-style seating and a full outdoor bar, serving as the pilot design for future Yard House locations. Chains do not pilot new formats in markets they consider secondary.
The Village is the headline, but it isn't the whole map
If you only pay attention to the Big Horn corner, you will miss half of what changed in Elk Grove this year.
Interlude Kitchen & Bar opened in December and quickly became the city's higher-end sit-down of the moment. Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen highlighted it on social media on Dec. 19, noting the restaurant is owned by Elk Grove natives Allen Kou and Won Trinh. Interlude is a recipient of the city's BReW program. "The BReW program is designed to support businesses that bring elevated culinary concepts to Elk Grove, strengthen our local economy and enhance our community's sense of place," Singh-Allen wrote. Translation for residents: the city is actively subsidizing the kind of full-service restaurants Elk Grove has historically been thin on.
Kai Japanese Cuisine joined the map as a modern sushi and sashimi concept. Bruster's Real Ice Cream was added to the leasing materials for Calvine Pointe. Dapper Doughnut landed at Elk Grove Commons. Cattlemens, the family-owned Northern California steakhouse chain, announced an Elk Grove expansion. Sana'a Cafe picked Elk Grove for its second Yemeni coffee shop. If your weekend used to alternate between the same three spots on Laguna, the rotation has quietly doubled.
Outside of dining, Planet Fitness is finishing out the former California Backyard space at Laguna 99 Plaza. The new gym is expected to offer a more convenient option for local members, who currently travel about 15 minutes to the nearest Planet Fitness on Mack Road in Sacramento. That fifteen-minute figure is worth holding onto. It shows up everywhere in Elk Grove decisions, from where residents shop to where they eat to how they weigh a school pickup against a run to Trader Joe's. Every business that opens inside city limits shaves fifteen minutes off something.
Building a Saturday around what's on the calendar
The other thing that changed in 2026 is that the calendar of things to do around a meal got denser too.
The Strauss Festival of Elk Grove returns to Elk Grove Park at 9950 Elk Grove Florin Rd on the final Thursday through Sunday of July (July 23-26, 2026). Performances can be seen on the stage at Elk Grove Park's Strauss Island, which audiences view from a grassy knoll at the edge of a lake. Pair it with an early dinner at Interlude or the Yard House beer garden, and the drive home is five minutes instead of forty-five.
The Summer Concert in the Park series runs through August at 3020 Renwick Avenue. The August 7 show features INFM, a three-piece edgy pop punk band from San Jose, hosted by Cosumnes CSD. National Night Out falls on August 4, and the Certified Farmers Market at Laguna Gateway Center runs Saturday mornings from 8 a.m. to noon at Laguna and Big Horn — the same intersection now anchored by The Village. You can walk from the farmers market to a Yard House lunch without moving your car.
What this means if you already live here
Take the year-over-year comparison seriously. In summer 2025, a resident planning a Saturday that included a farmers market, a full-service lunch with a national name attached, an afternoon at a bookstore, and dinner near a live concert would have plotted at least two freeway segments. In August 2026, all of it fits inside a two-mile square around Elk Grove Boulevard and Big Horn, and it does not require passing the sign for Highway 99.
That is the shift. Not any single opening. The collective effect of enough openings that Elk Grove residents stop treating "eating out" as a decision that starts with which suburb to drive to. The city that a lot of longtime homeowners moved to for the schools and the yard is finally building the food and gathering scene that gave everyone else a reason to leave on weekends.
If you own a home here, that matters for reasons beyond dinner. Neighborhood desirability tracks with the ten-minute radius, and the ten-minute radius in Elk Grove just got a lot more useful.
Curious what the changing local map means for your home's value? Rajan George offers a free, no-pressure valuation grounded in current Elk Grove sales activity and a careful look at your home's condition and finishes. Get Your Free Home Valuation and start with real numbers.
