SF News Ross Dress For Less Wants to Take Over the Saks Off Fifth Location at Fifth and Market Street There’s already a Ross Dress for Less at Fourth and Market Streets, and now there may be another just one block away at Fifth and Market Streets, though it’s unclear if Ross is adding a new store or just moving.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink El Farolito Is Coming to North Beach After All The North Beach El Farolito is suddenly expected to open “any day now,” as after an eight-month battle over SF formula retail rules, a compromise deal has greased the skids for the taqueria to open near Grant Avenue and Broadway.
SF News San Francisco Mayor Challenges Residents To Buy From Small Businesses, Eschew Amazon or Target, For 30 Days As the city and its small neighborhood businesses attempt to crawl back toward normalcy in the waning months of this pandemic, San Francisco's Mayor London Breed is challenging residents to put themselves on a diet from chain retail, and patronize local businesses only in the month of May.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Japanese Curry Spot Forced to Close Right After Opening In Marina District Because of SF's Formula Retail Rules In yet another argument for why SF neighborhoods can not afford to be too picky about what kinds of retail and restaurants they get in the midst of a retail apocalypse, the first U.S. location of Hinoya Curry was forced to close just weeks after opening in order to go through a permitting process.
SF Politics Will the Pandemic Retail Apocalypse Push SF Neighborhoods to Ease Formula Retail Rules? The pandemic and recession may be reason enough to ease at least some of the restrictions that have kept chain stores of all kinds from populating empty retail spaces, now that neighborhoods like Hayes Valley are looking pretty grim.
SF News Five Reasons Why The Castro And North Beach Have So Many Vacant Storefronts San Francisco's retail vacancy problem has become a source of persistent blight in the neighborhoods of North Beach and Castro over the last five years, despite a booming local economy. What gives?
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Blue Bottle Coffee Sells Majority Stake To Nestle The cycle from homegrown, artisanal coffee bar on an alley to selling out to an international food conglomerate is complete, as it's announced today that Swiss food giant Nestle has purchased a 68-percent
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Blue Bottle Blocked From Opening In The Lower Haight Amid Neighborhood Revolt We saw this coming last summer as soon as news broke that Blue Bottle Coffee had set its sights on a corner spot in the Lower Haight that was for two decades the
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Blue Bottle Is Still Trying To Move Into Former Bean There Cafe Space In Lower Haight After 21-year-old Lower Haight mainstay cafe Bean There was forced to close a year ago at the corner of Steiner and Waller amid what the owner characterized as a dishonest move by the
SF News Britex Fabrics May Move After 64 Years, But Will Remain In SF Asked to share her go-to recommendation for maker-folk from out of town, Project Runway star and local designer Emily Payne shouted out Britex Fabrics, describing it to SFist as "a family-run luxury fabric
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Ike's Place And Sweet Inspiration Try To Skirt Formula Retail Rules With 'Mike's Place' Sandwiches A partnership continues between longtime Castro dessert spot Sweet Inspiration (2239 Market Street) and soon-to-be-evicted, uber-popular 16th Street sandwich spot Ike's Place, though in order to avoid the wrath of the Planning Department,
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Prepare For A Revolt: Blue Bottle Possibly Taking Over Beloved Former Bean There Space In Lower Haight Many in the neighborhood wept and cried foul earlier this year when the Lower Haight's beloved, 21-year-old café Bean There was forced to shutter. The reason was a familiar one: The landlord, who
SF News SF May Limit Chain-Store Subsidiaries, Too San Francisco's formula retail rules, est. 2004, don't themselves adhere to any one strict formula. For example, while Hayes Valley, Chinatown's tourist corridor, and North Beach ban chains entirely, other parts of town
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Whole Foods To Open One Of The First Of Its Cheaper 365 Market Concepts On Polk Whole Foods is rolling out the first of its slimmed down, less expensive 365 By Whole Foods markets in 2016, beginning with one in LA's Silverlake neighborhood, and another now proposed for the
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Once Upon A Time, The Nopa Space Almost Became A Blockbuster Video It's kind of amazing the way neighborhoods morph and change over time, some for better and some for worse, sometimes incrementally and sometimes pretty quickly. The last five years, for instance, has seen
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink LA-Based Healthy Buffet Chain Lemonade Taking Three More La Boulange Spaces, Including The Metreon As was rumored last week after they inked a deal for the former La Boulange location in West Portal, LA-based fast-casual chain Lemonade has snagged three more of the soon-to-be-revived bakery's former digs:
SF News Long-Vacant Mission Grocery Store Might Finally Get A Tenant After sitting empty for five years, a long-shuttered grocery store just steps from a highly desirable Mission District stretch of 24th Street might reopen with a new tenant. 1245 South Van Ness Avenue
SF News Chain Retail Rules For S.F. To Get More Strict A proposal before the Board of Supervisors, spearheaded by Eric Mar, could further complicate things for chain retailers seeking space in San Francisco. The new guidelines, which go to a vote next week,
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Castro Hamburger Mary's Will Go To Planning Vote In December The literally decade-long saga surrounding a single empty property in the Castro will enter its next and most certainly not final chapter later this fall when the Planning Commission will decide whether the
SF News AIDS Healthcare Foundation Suing City Over Castro Pharmacy Snub The Los Angeles-based non-profit AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is suing the City of San Francisco, as they announced Monday, over what they see as their right to relocate and consolidate their two local
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Hayes Valley Grocery Store May Get Formula-Retail Exception A planned, large-scale grocery store at 555 Fulton Street (between Laguna and Octavia) is going before the Board of Supervisors tonight to possibly receive an exception to the neighborhood's ban on formula retail.
SF News Activism Wins: Jack Spade Backs Out Of The Mission In a coup for the anti-formula-retail contingent and Valencia merchants, Jack Spade has backed out of trying to move into the former Adobe Books location on 16th Street, bowing to neighborhood protests. The
SF News Valencia Merchants, Others, Honestly Surprised Jack Spade Is Not Afraid Of Them The move by Liz Claiborne-owned mini-chain Jack Spade to open on 16th Street has become, for many, a galvanizing symbol of the latest phase in the Mission's gentrification and potential loss of character.
SF News Jack Spade Cleared For 16th Street (For Now) Wednesday evening, the Board of Appeals voted 3-2 to allow a Jack Spade store to continue building out their controversial new store on 16th Street in the Mission. Despite an aggressive campaign from
SF News New Coffee War Brewing In The Castro Coffee. Suffice it to say we are a town obsessed. And though it may not boast the hip-kid-approved venues of Ritual, Four Barrel, or The Mill, or the even bougier Sightglass or Blue
