What I learned from my San Francisco restaurants – Latest News
Running a restaurant is one of the toughest issues I’ve ever executed — and I say that as somebody who cherished it, day-after-day.
The margins are razor skinny, the operations are relentless, and the life-style calls for all the pieces you’ve got. I wouldn’t advocate it to anybody who doesn’t go in with eyes broad open.
But executed proper, proudly owning a restaurant may be deeply rewarding, even scalable.
Even in San Francisco.
People wait in line to take a look at on the property sale for Cafe Jaqueline within the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco May 15, 2026, following its latest closure. Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle by way of AP
It taught me more about business, people, and resilience than anything I’ve skilled.
San Francisco — a metropolis I love — added its own layer of complexity.
Health and building codes delayed our openings by months, and price us hundreds of {dollars} in bills earlier than we ever served a single buyer.
Health inspections have been inconsistent. And some of probably the most well-intentioned voter-passed laws — insurance policies I personally supported — turned severe financial and administrative burdens in follow.
The metropolis’s progressive ambitions and the realities of working a small business don’t all the time reconcile neatly.
But I additionally had actual help. The Office of Small Business below then-Mayors Ed Lee and London Breed was genuinely useful.
London Breed speaks during a information convention. Getty Images
Local retailers associations and district development efforts led by our supervisors gave small companies a actual voice. These weren’t simply symbolic — they have been the varieties of packages that gave you a preventing probability when the headwinds picked up.
That mentioned, I’ve by no means believed in blaming a metropolis or a authorities for a business failure. It’s too easy, and it lets entrepreneurs off the hook.
Take San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance — one of the nation’s first legal guidelines mandating employer-sponsored health look after companies with more than 19 workers. For a small informal restaurant, that was a vital hit.
But we raised our costs, defined precisely why to our clients, and have been clear with our crew.
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The outcome? Our workers felt valued, stayed loyal, and stored delivering an distinctive product.
We had much less than 10% annual worker turnover — basically unheard of within the hospitality industry.
The problem of raising costs to pay for health insurance coverage compelled us to construct a higher business.
The coronavirus pandemic examined everybody, however again, the town confirmed up in significant methods. Temporary caps on supply platform take-rates from providers like Uber Eats and DoorDash allow us to construct a supply business we’d by no means had earlier than.
Temporary alcohol supply approval opened one other income stream. None of it changed what we’d misplaced, nevertheless it stored us within the recreation.
Mayor Daniel Lurie delivers remarks during the Drug-Free Sidewalks One Year Anniversary at Montesacro SoMa in San Francisco on May 20, 2026. Anadolu by way of Getty Images
I’m genuinely bullish on San Francisco restaurants proper now. Consumer urge for food for eating out has clearly rebounded, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has introduced actual vitality to the town’s restoration — quicker allowing, cleaner industrial corridors, a dedication to creating SF an enticing vacation spot for locals and vacationers alike.
When I met the mayor at a Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) assembly a couple of years in the past, he made particular guarantees to restaurant homeowners.
From what I can inform, he’s stored them.
Lurie jogs my memory of the type of resilient entrepreneur who figures out how to win no matter what’s thrown at him.
That spirit, on the civic stage, is precisely what San Francisco’s restaurant scene wants.
Nate Pollak is an entrepreneur and Bay Area business chief who co-founded and co-owned The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen chain for more than a decade.
