A San Francisco restaurant that started as a pop-up is looking for a new home after the owner said he recently learned the rent for his space would triple to about $25,000.<\/p>\n
Al Pastor Papi owner and chef Miguel Escobedo opened the pop-up in July 2025 with the help of the Vacant to Vibrant program, which helped him find a restaurant-ready location.<\/p>\n
“They were hoping to find a strong local brand that could probably make some noise here,” Escobedo said. “We were connected and Al Pastor Papi pop-up was born.”<\/p>\n
Escobedo said it has been a fun adventure. The agreement was to do a pop-up for a year and a half through the end of 2026. Then the hope was to work out a deal to stay on a more long-term basis.<\/p>\n
“The typical agreement with Vacant to Vibrant is 10% of what you sell, which is amazing, unheard of,” Escobedo said.<\/p>\n
Escobedo said they worked out a deal with the landlord and the future looked bright. But now there are new owners and the asking price of rent changed dramatically.<\/p>\n
“Pretty much tripled with what the new landlord was wanting from us and in fact offered us, but I couldn\u2019t accept it,” Escobedo said.<\/p>\n
NBC Bay Area reached out to the management company but didn\u2019t immediately hear back.<\/p>\n
Escobedo said the Vacant to Vibrant program has been very supportive all along.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the executive director of SF New Deal, which runs the program, said their team works closely with every program participant to help them navigate both their pop-up term and what comes next, saying, “Miguel and the team at Al Pastor Papi have brought an inspiring concept downtown through their pop-up and we have been actively working with them to explore opportunities and determine the best path forward beyond their current term.”<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Escobedo plans to keep serving his customers while he figures out what the next chapter looks like.<\/p>\n
“Just try to find another home for Al Pastor Papi,” he said. “I want this for my family and I want this for my community.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Francisco restaurant that started as a pop-up is looking for a new home after the owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-467353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","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\/467353","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=467353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}