While there\u2019s no foolproof formula for expanding a food business, restaurant consultant Stacey Jed has spent years watching Bay Area restaurateurs figure out what works \u2014 and what doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jed works with Full Plate Consulting, an organization that helps everyone from budding restaurateurs to seasoned hospitality professionals navigate the industry, from insurance and daily operations to culinary support and more. A former restaurant owner herself, Jed operated Bluestem Restaurant & Market, an upscale American eatery in downtown San Francisco, with her husband, Adam, for over a decade before shuttering.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d always loved restaurants, and then I married a restaurateur, and he and I started collaborating, and then we opened our own restaurant and had that running for about 14 years in downtown San Francisco,\u201d Jed said. \u201cAnd then after COVID, a couple of years later, we decided to wind down. Being in the heart of San Francisco was a real challenge, and so we decided to move into consulting and help other restaurateurs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the neighborhood, not the city<\/p>\n
For Jed, one major tip she gives clients looking to expand is simple, but also easy to overlook: know your neighborhood and understand who you\u2019re opening for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo one of the things that we advocate to our clients is you really have to build for your neighborhood,\u201d Jed said. \u201cSay you\u2019re in Berkeley and you want to move to the mission, that\u2019s not a guarantee that if you succeed in Berkeley that you\u2019ll succeed in the Mission. Every neighborhood\u2019s going to be different, and you really have to kind of treat it as a new concept, even if it\u2019s sharing the same name.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nity Jaiswal, owner of Noor Indian Fusion Kitchen, learned that lesson the hard way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/P1135073-1600x1201.jpg\")
Nity Jaiswal, owner of Noor Indian Fusion Kitchen in Berkeley, soft opened hew new San Francisco restaurant at the end of August 2026. Credit: Courtesy of Noor Indian Fusion Kitchen<\/p>\n
Jaiswal opened Noor Indian Fusion Kitchen as an Oakland ghost kitchen in 2022, before establishing her brick-and-mortar in Berkeley in 2024. Still, she had long dreamed of opening a location in San Francisco, but her first attempt at breaking into the SF food scene didn\u2019t go as planned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we did open a cloud kitchen two years ago in San Francisco, which we later shut down because, logistically, it wasn\u2019t working out for us,\u201d Jaiswal said. \u201cIn the cloud kitchen, because of the commissions we weren\u2019t really making a lot of profit, so we ended up closing it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the challenge, Jaiswal said, was the difference in customer base and how they ordered. While San Francisco did bring in a larger number of orders, they were often smaller in volume, making it harder for Jaiswal to convert into revenue. As opposed to the East Bay, where family-sized takeout orders or large parties would often come into her restaurant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDemographically SF is full of single people and very young nuclear families. Here it\u2019s more like larger families, more people, and whenever we get people coming into the restaurant, they come in large groups.\u201d Jaiswal said. \u201cWe tend to see like groups of eight people, 10 people. A family of four is at least always here. But over there, it was like two people ordering dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that experience, Jaiswal returned to San Francisco at the end of August, soft opening a waterfront location of Noor on Brannan Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/P1135312-1600x1201.jpg\")
After starting in Berkeley, Noor Indian Fusion Kitchen moved out West to 100 Brannan St. in San Francisco. Credit: Courtesy of Noor Indian Fusion Kitchen<\/p>\n
Jed also warns restaurateurs to be prepared for the financial and logistical realities of expanding, and that they need to be prepared to cross into a new cost and regulatory environment. This can mean being aware of costs, like administrative or permitting fees, to even figuring out if a dish makes sense financially on the menu, a lesson Jaiswal also echoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially I would be like, \u2018Oh, I want this on the menu\u2019, but I didn\u2019t ever think like, \u2018Does it make sense financially\u2019? Because some of the dishes that I had in the menu earlier were so labor intensive,\u201d Jaiswal said. \u201cIt would take like five hours to just do the prep, and then again more prep when we serve it. And financially, it just didn\u2019t make sense.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plus, making the numbers work isn\u2019t just about cutting costs, it\u2019s also about knowing what your customers are willing to pay for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Expansion doesn\u2019t fix a fragile operation. It really exposes it.\u2019<\/p>\n
Tommy Hester opened the Two Pitchers Brewing in 2021 in Oakland with his business partner Wilson Barr. Former college baseball pitchers, the duo\u2019s concept of bringing radlers and shandies \u2014 or high quality beers mixed with fruit juices \u2014 into the mainstream U.S. beer market. The concept was a hit in the Bay, leading to their Ocean Beach taproom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Oceanbeachtaproom-1600x1067.jpg\")
Tommy Hester and Wilson Barr, owners of Two Pitchers Brewing Company, opened their Ocean Beach taproom earlier this year. Now they\u2019re gearing up for a third location in the Mission District. Credit: Two Pitchers Brewing Company<\/p>\n
The beer industry has hit a rough patch, as trends show historically low rates<\/a> of drinking in the U.S, with beer production specifically at its lowest in a decade<\/a>, but this hasn\u2019t deterred the duo In fact, Hester says Two Pitchers is thriving, and that they\u2019re gearing up to launch their third location, this time an expansive 8,000 square-foot spot in the Mission District that was once a mayonnaise factory.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal every day is to kind of walk the walk and not just talk the talk,\u201d Hester said. \u201cYou can make a really successful tap room and space by making it comfortable and community-focused by doing things like our $3 beer \u2014 things that are giving back to people, because when you try to meet them, you get even more back in return. They can feel when a space is kind of treating them fairly, when it\u2019s trying to not just say hey we\u2019re trying to be affordable but actually doing it. \u201d<\/p>\n But above all, Jed stresses that food entrepreneurs looking to expand their businesses should focus on building a strong foundation at their first spot before making any jumps across the bridge.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, I think the businesses that make this leap have already built their playbook first,\u201d Jed explained. \u201cThey\u2019re not improving in a second city or a second location. You know expansion doesn\u2019t fix a fragile operation. It really exposes it. You know the systems have to be solid before you add a second address.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Restaurant owners Mayseto Wasem of Grand Lake Kitchen and chef Gregoire Jacquet of Gregoire echo this, noting that, without proper systems and trust in their employees and franchisees, they wouldn\u2019t have been able to successfully grow beyond their first locations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Grand Lake Kitchen opened on Lake Merritt in 2012, starting out as a 12-seat grab-and-go deli counter with wine service. After expanding and opening a second location in the Dimond District, Wasem acquired a third in San Francisco\u2019s Noe Valley \u2014 which opened in March of this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n After expanding from one location to three, Wasem quickly learned that the growth of her restaurant would depend on streamlining restaurant systems and crafting a playbook for managers and employees to follow that is consistent and clear, across all restaurant sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs a restaurant founder, or a small business owner you really need to transition from firefighting to systems. Otherwise, it\u2019s not sustainable,\u201d Wasem warns. \u201cYou know, we restaurant people are doers, and we are stubborn, and our work ethic is really good, possibly toxic at times, but you know what I mean. So there are a lot of things that you have to get real about if you\u2019re going to be any good for your business, especially expanding into multiple locations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n For Jacquet, learning about those realities was a different kind of challenge. On a busy kitchen line, or in any back-of-the-house gig, Jacquet is your man. Business management, on the other hand, he said, wasn\u2019t exactly his strong suit when he first started out.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jacquet first opened Gregoire in Berkeley in 2002, coming off of his tenure at the Ritz-Carlton in Puerto Rico. He further expanded into Oakland, opening a Piedmont Avenue location in 2006, which he ran for over 11 years until he made the decision to close.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI never went to school. I mean, I went to cooking school, but not business school. But growing the business was always in my mind and my wife\u2019s, and since we thought Gregoire was very successful we wanted to grow it, but I had no idea how to do that. And then I just burned out.\u201d<\/p>\n So, when Jacquet and his wife flirted with the idea of trying to expand Gregoire again, he knew he needed a model that would fit his budget and current lifestyle. So Jacquet turned towards franchising \u2014 a hands-off model that allows businesses to license their branding and image to an independent owner who would sell Gregoire\u2019s food and products, all while paying Jacquet a fee to do so. This model can help owners grow their food business without investing as much capital or time into managing the new location.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jacquet spent time building out the franchise, working with lawyers and preparing a FDD, or a franchise disclosure document, before putting out a call for franchisee applications in 2024. Since then, he reports that his San Francisco location in the Inner Sunset is going strong.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI had learned to not be so involved in the business, and I was working more, you know, overviewing and managing the store from above. I was like, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s a different way to grow. We can do it as a franchise.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s no secret that owning and operating a food business is hard, but in the Bay Area it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2436,2593,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-450465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-berkeley-restaurants-and-bars","tag-oakland-restaurants-and-bars","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GLK-Noe-Valley_March2026-4059-1600x1125.jpg\")
After running two locations in Oakland for years, Grand Lake Kitchen expanded to Noe Valley in March 2026. Credit: Grand Lake Kitchen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gregoire-San-francisco.webp\")
A branch of Gr\u00e9goire opened in the Inner Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco in March 2026. Credit: Gregoire<\/p>\n