In this week’s update of what’s going on with local development: Storefronts are changing among small businesses.
Knead Patisserie, a french bakery on 24th street bakery that shared wares with the Local Mission Eatery, will close its doors tomorrow in search of “fresh air and country living.” The bakery may open pop-ups in the area, but appears to be taking a year-long hiatus from business, after which it may reopen in Lodi.
La Cocina, meanwhile, has celebrated two new openings, one of them on the same street. The business incubator for aspiring restauranteurs, many of them low-income women, announced that its program graduate D’Maize Catering will move into the Casa Sanchez space at 2778 24th Street.
La Cocina will also move a small market featuring products cooked up by their program participants into none other than the Westfield San Francisco mall. The space was formerly occupied by a branch of the recently departed Starbucks-owned La Boulange chain.
Meanwhile, the business lending nonprofit Kiva held an event at City Hall last night to kick off its “Keep the Heart in San Francisco” project, intended to supply loans to small business owners in San Francisco to help them stay in place in difficult times. The loans, up to $10,000, are crowdfunded from individual lenders who choose to support a business with an online profile. Locally, businesses supported by Kiva include The Network Store on Valencia street and the Antojitos Salvadoreños restaurant displaced by January’s Mission and 22nd street fire.
While Bar Tartine transitions to Crescent after its sale to the chefs who have been running it for years, the evening dinner series Tartine Afterhours will return next week, Oct. 14, with a book signing and multi-course dinner by Claire Ptak of London’s Violet Bakery.
And while we’re talking food, despite not strictly being about building use, we have to mention an important development in eats: Mission Chinese Food’s newest invention, the Chinese Burrito, wraps salt cod, ma po tofu, cheese, and various vegetables in a flour tortilla. We haven’t tried it yet, but Allan Hough over at Mission Mission apparently enjoyed Chinese Burrito for three meals in a row and reports it’s the perfect duo of drunk food and hangover cure wrapped into one tinfoil package.