About 85% of San Francisco FiDi, SoMa eating places are closed 

The sight of hurried shopkeepers carrying boxes of lettuce was typical of San Francisco’s downtown lunches before March. However, with the business world staying at home, this once-familiar scene has now been replaced with empty streets and dimmed shop windows.

Adam Mesnick says that since the pandemic that devastated restaurants and bars in the financial district and south of the market, his sandwich shop, Deli Board, has become a destination for customers who happen to be in the neighborhood for coffee or too To walk scheduled appointment.

“It’s decimated down here. I mean, you watch this collapse all the time, ”said Mesnick about the current state of business in the area around SoMa and the FiDi districts.

It wouldn’t be far to describe these former bustling neighborhoods as “decimated”. Based on trends in credit card data collected by Mastercard and shared with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 293 out of 344 (or 85%) of bars and restaurants in SoMa, FiDi, and adjacent neighborhoods are considered closed.

This percentage includes businesses that were temporarily or permanently closed through November 30th for the following San Francisco zip codes: 94102, 94103, 94104, 94105, 94107, 94108, and 94109. (Editor’s note: Some of these bars and restaurants may have, according to Mastercard, which looked at spending from late October through late November, appeared to be closed rather than “open” due to Thanksgiving.

In the South of Market, Financial District and neighboring districts of SF, around 85% of restaurants and bars have been temporarily or permanently closed since March. This is evident from the trends in MasterCard credit card information provided to the Chamber of Commerce by SF. The percentage only focused on the food industry through the end of November around FiDi, SoMa, Nob Hill, Pulk Gulch and others highlighted on this map.

Google Maps

“I think the basic scary thing for downtown, SoMa, and some of the Moscone Center is just the lack of business customers and the everyday people who are the bread and butter of cafes and places that haven’t even reopened,” said Laurie Thomas, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, “So many of these downtown restaurants, and certainly those at the Moscone Center, really depend on business travel. I think we’ll need the vaccine before the state gives us any conventions.”

Reaching the full extent of city-wide restaurant closings is difficult, according to Thomas. One way to quantify this is to go through about 4,000 existing restaurant permits and check which ones are still active. She points out that companies sometimes appear active (or open) despite their actual status.

“Who will bother calling the health department and closing the permit? This is the last thing you will think of when you have to close a business, ”said Thomas. “So, I think the credit card information is what we should be looking at.”

When looking at credit card trends, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce can judge the number of closings based on the lack of sales transactions in bars and restaurants.

“At the beginning of the pandemic [restaurant closures in downtown were at] About 50%, which was shocking, ”said Emily Abraham, public order manager for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “[We] in the chamber were very concerned about all of our members and all industries in the city. I think it will be an uphill, tough fight. “

And with just a few weeks left in 2020, it’s a trend that Abraham believes will continue into 2021.

“There’s only so much to shoot for restaurants,” said Abraham. “Unfortunately we will see them close in large numbers.”

During the pandemic, restaurants have found new ways to do business while following ever-changing operating rules and restrictions. Last week, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and Marin counties agreed to issue a home stay order ahead of Governor Gavin Newsom’s state timeline. Currently, restaurants can only offer take-away meals without having to dine outdoors. In the meantime, bars and wineries have to close.

Most detrimental to the downtown SF food industry, however, was the lack of clerks and conventions. Mesnick said that roughly 25% of his business relied heavily on catering, but that part of his finances has since diminished.

“I had a lot of catering as anyone can imagine,” said Mesnick. “We had five or six really good customers that we would feed once a month. So in terms of my production, we’re not even close to where we are. My income was based on private parties and things like that. “

It’s also unclear what the downtown SF landscape will look like in 2021. Many tech companies like Facebook and Google have announced that they will be giving their employees the ability to work remotely for the foreseeable future, while others like Twitter have announced that their work on Domestic Policy will continue indefinitely.

“Permanent remote control [and] Opportunities to work from home [is] We’re going to eliminate a huge base of both pedestrian traffic and large corporate dinners for these catering orders, ”said Abraham. “I think this will have an impact on the city’s demographics.”

In this photo, taken on Friday, April 17, 2020, a woman walks past the former Pacific Stock Exchange building in San Francisco’s financial district. Usually the months leading up to summer bring lively crowds to the city’s famous landmarks, but this year they sit empty and quiet because of the coronavirus threat. Some parts are like creepy ghost towns or blatant scenes from a science fiction movie.

Eric Risberg / AP

The city of San Francisco has offered support to help their restaurants by waiving some permit fees, implementing the Slow Streets program, and allowing facilities to build parklets for outdoor dining, and although Thomas thinks they do have all been helpful, this is just not enough. She is not optimistic that restaurateurs can hold out without major government support.

“We have to get this help from the federal government and we can’t wait for the inauguration,” said Thomas. “We need something temporary now … because people can’t make it, and not just San Francisco. We need millions of dollars for this industry. “

Amid the losses, there were new restaurant openings in the city in 2020. Yelp told SFGATE that San Francisco had a total of 299 new store openings between March 1 and November 30, and saw an additional 844 restaurant openings within the same period.

Mesnick said he was lucky enough to be able to sell a product that is considered “essential” amid the pandemic. He is grateful for his employees, who “have done an enormous amount of adjustment work”. But when Mesnick looks to the next year, he thinks about how the Deli Board could change. His lease at 1058 Folsom Street next fall will be for 10 years, but after that he’s not sure what his future will look like.

“I feel like right now, I’m in the line of the COVID fire,” Mesnick said. “Anything could happen tomorrow … [and] I think the complications of doing business in San Francisco have always been extremely complicated by forces beyond human control. There have been inherent challenges that, unfortunately, are really being exposed in the face of COVID. I think the city needs to make some effort to inspire people to keep growing here. “