Where San Francisco is adding new businesses, by neighborhood

San Francisco has paid business owners $5.3 million since 2023 to move into empty ground-floor storefronts. Of the first group of about 70 grant winners, 55 are still open where they started, 11 have closed and 3 have moved, Mission Local reported on October 8.

That is roughly four in five still in place about three years in. It also raises the obvious follow-up: where are new businesses actually showing up? We counted. In the three months from July 8 to October 8, 2026, the city's Registered Business Locations data shows 2,210 new business locations in San Francisco. The Financial District and South Beach area led with 308. The Mission was second with 188.

Houseberry's amenities score rates what sits within easy reach of home. It gives the Financial District/Barbary Coast a 3.4 out of 5 and the Inner Mission a 3.3. The Excelsior, one of the places the grant targets, scores 2.6.

How the grant works

The city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development runs the program. This year's version paid $50,000 for retail and personal services, $75,000 for a cafe or other food business, and $100,000 for a full-service restaurant, bar, pharmacy or grocery, according to the city's application page. To qualify, a business had to have been operating at least three years, bring in $5 million or less, have 100 or fewer employees and sign a ground-floor lease of at least three years.

The money is aimed. Owners who already had a lease could apply on set corridors: Third Street in the Bayview, Chinatown, downtown, Mid-Market, Mission Street from 14th Street to Cesar Chavez, the Fillmore and Port property. A second track, for owners still hunting for a space, covered the Tenderloin, the Excelsior and Visitacion Valley, with help from a broker.

Some of the winners are easy to find. Freshroll got $100,000 for a third location downtown. Falafelland got $50,000 for a spot on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin. "If I started all over, I would have to spend six times for that equipment," owner Billy Alabsi told Mission Local.

Where the new businesses are

Here are the top 10 neighborhoods by new registered business locations, using the city's own neighborhood boundaries, next to the same three months in 2025.

Read the 2025 column carefully. Businesses often register a new location weeks or months after they open, so the most recent three months always look thin and fill in later. Most neighborhoods show fewer 2026 registrations for that reason alone. What stands out is the handful that are already ahead of last year anyway: West of Twin Peaks, up from 81 to 97, the Outer Richmond, up from 75 to 82, Bernal Heights, up from 46 to 56, and the Excelsior, up from 46 to 55.

The Excelsior is one of the grant's target areas. On Houseberry's scores, the Excelsior rates 2.6 out of 5 for amenities, in the bottom fifth of the city's 92 neighborhoods, so every new storefront there moves the needle more than one in the Marina would.

A registration is not always a storefront. The data counts consultants, home businesses and online sellers too. Filtering to retail and food service narrows the picture, and the order shifts.

The Bayview, where Third Street is a grant corridor, jumps to third with 24 new retail and food locations, ahead of the Sunset and the Tenderloin at 21 each. The data cannot prove the grant caused that. It does show new storefronts arriving where the money was pointed.

Downtown is still the weak spot even as it leads the count. Cushman & Wakefield put Union Square vacancy at 20.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026, against 5.8 percent citywide. Uniqlo reopens on October 9 at 801 Market Street, a return the city is treating as a signal for the whole district.

We think the storefront grant is about the best deal San Francisco gets in small-business spending. A $50,000 check that fills a dark window for three years changes a block in a way a buyer walking it can see. Even when a grantee closes, the city keeps a built-out space. "If the business doesn't succeed, those resources have made a space more conducive for a new business to move into," OEWD's Kate Patterson told Mission Local.

The honest limit is scale. Eleven closures out of about 70 is a 16 percent failure rate in three years, and 39 grants this summer barely dent a city with thousands of storefronts. The program works. It is small.

If you are weighing a neighborhood partly on what is within walking distance, Houseberry's amenities score is the quickest read. Compare the Outer Sunset, the Excelsior, the Mission and the rest on Houseberry's San Francisco neighborhood ranking.

Sources

• Mission Local: S.F. started giving cash to help fill vacant storefronts. It's working (October 8, 2026)
• City of San Francisco: grant to open a new storefront, lease track
• City of San Francisco: new grants to support neighborhood businesses
• DataSF: Registered Business Locations
• Cushman & Wakefield: San Francisco retail MarketBeat, Q2 2026
• SF Standard: Uniqlo returns downtown (October 8, 2026)