The San Francisco planning commission voted Thursday to grant Therapy Stores, a gift shop with 10 locations around the Bay Area — permission to open its 11th outpost in the Inner Richmond.
That number would not require Jing Chen, who owns Therapy Stores, to ask for permission under San Francisco’s “formula retail” law. It is generally triggered after 11 locations and Chen operated 11 stores when she originally applied. Since then, Chen confirmed, her store in San Bruno closed. The city’s planning code, however, “also counts locations entitled for operating,” not just ones currently in operation, Chen said.
“Rather than arguing any technicalities, both we and Planning thought it better to engage with the community and undertake the formula retail conditional use process” for the Clement Street location, Chen wrote, referring to the type of permit required by the city and granted by the commission Thursday.
Members of the Clement Street Merchants Association, who have been organizing to kill the expansion, told Mission Local they plan to appeal the commission’s decision to let Chen open. The planning commission could not be reached for comment on an appeal or whether Chen’s current count of 11 stores would be an issue under the formula retail stipulations.
A few minutes into the hour-long hearing over the proposed location at 32 Clement St. near Second Avenue — which has been vacant since 2024, according to city planner Sylvia Jimenez — Chen made her case to the planning commission.
“If there’s a chain, this is the chain. I am the chain,” Chen said. She applied for a conditional use authorization in May. “I’m not some faceless monster that some try to portray me to be.”
Those words were a pre-emptive defense — some subsequent comments turned highly personal against Chen. One Clement Street vintage shop owner, Lindsey Hansen, called Chen “dishonest and unneighborly.” Hansen was one of five merchants who spoke out against Therapy Stores Thursday.
“How does allowing a formula retail chain that carries the exact same stuffies, onsies, S.F. merch, hats, hair clips, candles, cards, socks and jewelry lines as several other existing businesses within the same three blocks fill a need?” asked Amanda Weld, who owns Tantrum toy store.
Five people spoke in favor of Chen. One, a neighbor of Chen’s, came to her defense, saying, “She loves her community. She loves people.” She and others spoke of Chen’s generosity and charitable donations she has made. Sales agent Rick Salazar said he had worked with Chen for years and felt her original location in the Mission was “responsible for the renaissance on Valencia Street.”
“I feel very uncomfortable by the fact,” Commissioner Mike Chen said later, “that we are being asked to decide this on the basis of character attestation.”
“I think, in some ways, we’re judging people, and not necessarily whether this is good for the city,” he added, saying he perceived the 11th location of a local chain as different from an outpost of a national retailer. “I’m inclined to approve with conditions.”
Clement Street merchants have long opposed the proposed store, and have not been shy in sounding the alarm around what they perceive to be dubious business practices by Chen.
Chen bought the 32 Clement St. building in December 2025 for just shy of $2 million, and registered her business there that same month. Clement Street merchants complained to the city after Mission Local reported the opening of Therapy’s then-11th location on Irving Street, arguing that the Clement location, which would have been number 12, would make the business a chain. One location has since shuttered, making the proposed Inner Richmond location an 11th spot.
Commissioners eventually agreed that Chen’s business posed no inherent threat to the businesses there, and voted unanimously to move her a step closer toward opening.
Chen has promised to work with Clement Street merchants to ensure her offerings don’t overlap with theirs, though planning staff said at the hearing “we cannot dictate what a particular shop sells.”
Commissioner Sean McGarry, who said he has lived in the Inner Richmond since 2011, said he understood concerns around competition.
But, the Irish-accented commissioner said bluntly, “Neighbors are neighbors.”
“One neighbor cannot just tell another what they can do and what they cannot do.”
