The Perennial, San Francisco’s 3-year-old restaurant with a distinct eco-friendly mission, will close on Feb. 9.

According to owners Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz, saying goodbye to the Mid-Market restaurant will enable them to serve as more effective advocates in promoting a renewable food system. Even though the restaurant will close its doors, the couple still plan to pursue the restaurant’s mission via its nonprofit sister organization, the Perennial Farming Initiative.

“The restaurant business is a lot of work. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to trim down the items on my to do list and it just made more sense to go this way,” says Leibowitz. “We can do a lot more if we focus more on communicating, consulting and advocacy.”

When the Perennial opened in 2016, it was hailed as a restaurant of the future, inspired to address climate change through food with a mission to become a zero-footprint restaurant, thanks in large part to the involvement of Zero Food Print.

Now, it will be going the way of other grandiose Mid-Market projects, like Bon Marche Brasserie and Cadence, both of which shuttered in 2016.

The couple remain partners in the New York and San Francisco outposts of Mission Chinese Food, and Myint has also been consulting with Danish brewer Mikkeller on Vesterbro Chinese Food in Copenhagen. Part of Myint’s collaboration is dependent on the brewery’s commitment for all of its restaurants — including the original SF location — to go carbon neutral.

No word yet on what business might take over the Ninth Street space.

The Perennial, 59 Ninth St., S.F. www.theperennialsf.com

Sarah Fritsche is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sfritsche@sfchronicle.com. Twitter/Instagram: @foodcentric