Walk Clement Street between 2nd and 6th Avenue on almost any evening this summer and you will find a line outside Rose Pizzeria, which opened in April and has been drawing waits stretching well past the door since its first week. A block away, the old Spanish Table storefront at 130 Clement sits behind construction paper, being rebuilt into something called Kitchen Commons. Two blocks past that, a dining room that used to be Bettola now serves gluten-free pinsa under the name Clementina. None of this reads like a coincidence once you start asking who actually signed these leases.
Clement Street's 2026 business changes include longtime local operators, existing Bay Area businesses expanding to new locations, and new ventures by people with ties to San Francisco. Several operators already had connections to the Inner Richmond or to the city's food and retail scene before opening here. The examples below include both operators returning to familiar spaces and businesses taking over storefronts previously occupied by others.
The Owners' Local Connections
Start with Kitchen Commons. The culinary supply store moving into the former Spanish Table space comes from a co-owner of Liholiho Yacht Club, who moved to the Inner Richmond back in 2001 and has spent his career elsewhere in the city's kitchens before deciding to open something on his own block. His business partner, Connor Bruce, grew up in the Bay Area and has lived in San Francisco for two decades. Their pitch for the space wasn't market opportunity in the abstract. It was that Clement Street's mix of businesses made this the right place to try something built around hospitality and craft, according to reporting from the San Francisco Standard.
Clementina tells a similar story from a different angle. Chef Gianluca Legrottaglie and his wife Viviana Devoto didn't discover an opportunity at 343 Clement. They already owned the restaurant that had occupied that address for years, Bettola, and when they closed it in February they didn't move on to a new neighborhood. They rebuilt the same room, opening up the old partitions into something more communal, and reopened under a new name with a fully gluten-free kitchen, according to Hoodline's coverage. The couple also runs Montesacro and 54 Mint elsewhere in the city, so Clementina is an established city operator bringing a new idea to a familiar address.
Jimmy Hsu offers the longest version of this pattern. He has owned Blue Danube, the Clement Street cafe near Fourth Avenue, for more than two decades and now runs a handful of other businesses on the same street. When a broker approached him earlier this year about a second location near the Lombard Street entrance to the Presidio, he took the deal, expanding from the business base he had already built, as Mission Local reported.
Same Address, New Name
The recycling pattern shows up across the corridor once you start tracking addresses instead of storefronts.
| Old occupant | Address | New occupant |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish Table | 130 Clement St | Kitchen Commons (fall 2026) |
| Bettola | 343 Clement St | Clementina |
| Beanstalk Cafe | 4555 California St | Loquat's second location |
| 6001 California Market | 6001 California St | Bi-Rite Market (no confirmed date) |
| K-Elements BBQ | 2140 Clement St | Smokin' D's BBQ |
| Lamps Plus | 4700 Geary Blvd | Awhile staging company |
Loquat, the Hayes Valley-born bakery-cafe, is filling the old Beanstalk Cafe space at 4555 California with the same Four Barrel coffee program it runs at its original Gough Street location, plus a wider bread selection, and is targeting a winter 2027 opening according to its owners' own social media posts. Bi-Rite, the grocer that started on 18th Street in the Mission, has signed a lease on the 1917 building at 6001 California and 22nd Avenue, previously home to Appel & Dietrich Fine Food Market and more recently the shuttered 6001 California Market. Co-CEO Patrick Mills told the San Francisco Chronicle he sees the location serving the Outer and Inner Richmond as well as Sea Cliff, and pointed to the Sunday Clement Street Farmers Market and existing dining destinations like Breadbelly and Pearl 6101 as evidence the area was already primed. Construction walls went up around the site in May, but Bi-Rite still hasn't given a firm opening date, which tells you how early-stage the project remains even with the lease signed.
Smokin' D's BBQ, an East-Asian-and-Mexican-influenced Texas barbecue concept, is taking over the former K-Elements space at 2140 Clement near 23rd Avenue for its second brick and mortar. Its first location sits two miles south on Irving Street in the Sunset, and the brand already runs food stalls at the Grand Lake farmers market in Oakland and at Stonestown, so the business is extending an existing Bay Area presence to a new San Francisco location.
The Two-Month Disappearing Act
Not every Clement Street story this year has been a grand opening. A few local businesses have weathered temporary disruptions, with some reopening and one still waiting to do so. Chapeau, the Parisian bistro at 126 Clement, closed for a few days in early March for a kitchen remodel and reopened March 11 serving the same traditional French menu. Y&Y Vietnamese at 914 Clement returned March 12 after nearly two months away, with new hours running Wednesday through Sunday. Moonmade Boutique at 455 Clement closed temporarily citing staffing shortages, with its Cupertino location still running while the Clement Street shop waits it out, per Mission Local's Richmond Buzz column.
None of these are stories about a corridor losing its footing. They're stories about small operators absorbing a rough stretch and, in some cases, reopening in the same spot, while others wait it out.
What the Night Market Shows
Community events are another part of Clement Street's local activity. The Heart of the Richmond District Night Market just wrapped its third year, running every third Saturday from May through August between 22nd and 25th Avenue. The May 16 opening night doubled as Alamo Elementary School's 100th anniversary celebration, with the school taking over 23rd Avenue for archival exhibits, campus tours, and a 21-and-over beer garden alongside the market's usual mix of food vendors, live music, mahjong, and a lion dance, according to the event's own recap. The final 2026 date, August 15, closed out a season built almost entirely around local sponsors: the Clement Street Merchants Association, the Richmond District YMCA, the Richmond Neighborhood Center, and Supervisor Connie Chan's office among them.
The night market pairs Alamo Elementary's anniversary celebration with a community event supported by local businesses and organizations.
The Takeaway
Clement Street's recent changes include new businesses, expansions by established Bay Area operators, and longtime restaurants returning after temporary closures. The examples here show how the corridor's businesses and community events are evolving.
If watching this pattern makes you curious about what it means for property values, renovation decisions, or the timing of a move in a neighborhood built this way, Bonnie Spindler has spent more than thirty years reading exactly these signals across San Francisco's older housing stock. Book an appointment when you're ready to talk it through.
