Svante's Restaurant in Downtown Round Rock Shutting Its Doors

ROUND ROCK, TX — After a mere two years in business, Svante's restaurant—touted for its grass-fed, all-natural beef—has closed, its owners announced this week on Facebook.

"It is with sincere regret and a touch of sadness that I have to inform you that we are closing Svante’s, our restaurant in Round Rock, for an indefinite period, and probably for good," the restaurateurs wrote. "We will continue with our retail operations (including the Barton Creek Farmers Market), our food truck and catering businesses and devote more resources to these."

The restaurant at 201 E. Main Street was operated by brothers Billy Swenson and Mike Swenson, who manage the referenced food truck in Austin. The brothers partially attributed the closure to an inability to supply the enough beef from the family ranch to sustain the business.

"There are several factors leading us to the decision," the Swensons wrote. "One is that with our retail business expanding so rapidly it is becoming too difficult to make sure that the supply of all natural, grass fed, grass finished beef from our family ranch is sufficient for all of our operations."

In a lengthy write-up in the Austin American-Statesman headlined "Texas ranching giants open Svante’s restaurant in Round Rock" alerting to the 2015 opening (a reference to the brothers' Swedish land-owning ancestor), the brothers outlined ambitious plans.

“Just about everything is either produced by farmers or made in-house,” one of the brothers told the newspaper. “We make our own ketchup, mustard, salad dressing. We make them fresh from our own ingredients.” There was even talk of partnering with Austin Java to come up with a private coffee brand with a name alluding to their heritage—"Svante's Swedish blend" or something like that, the restaurateur said.

More recently, the restaurant provided more customer appeal with burgers named after Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump prior to the election, with ingredients tailored to each candidate's characteristics. The Trump Burger was described as having a "comb-over" of cheddar cheese with a foundation of Russian dressing, the Statesman reported. The Hillary Burger ingredients were billed as being "classified."

"Thank you to our customers, employees and the local farmers who helped supply Svante’s for the past two years," the brothers Swenson wrote on Facebook. "We met a lot of good people along the way, many of whom have become great friends."

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