How many errands can you actually finish without leaving a single block of Polk Street? For most of the last decade, the honest answer in Russian Hill has been: fewer than it looks like you should be able to. The block between Broadway and Vallejo has seen businesses come and go over the past several years. This fall, several businesses and planned openings are lining up, making the block look more like a place where you could structure a whole day.
Start with the grocery anchor. Bi-Rite Market opened its third San Francisco location on that stretch of Polk in 2024, taking over a spot that had been a Real Food Co. grocery since 1976. At 4,000 square feet, it's roughly twice the size of Bi-Rite's original Mission store and about 50 percent larger than its NoPa location, and owner Sam Mogannam signed a 26-year lease, making the Polk Street store the company's new headquarters as well as its largest footprint in the city. That's not a pop-up bet. That's a company deciding this block is worth committing to for a generation.
Directly on the same stretch, a different kind of business has had a harder time. The Bagelry, a dedicated bagel shop, once operated at 2139 Polk, essentially across from where Bi-Rite now sits. It closed. A Peet's Coffee took over nearby retail space on the same block and, as part of a wider round of Peet's closures across the city, shut down too, around January 2026. Two attempts at feeding the morning rush on this exact block, two closures. That's the part of the story that makes what's happening now worth paying attention to.
The San Francisco Standard reported that Bageletto, the bagel shop that opened in the Mission in 2025, is taking over that former Peet's space between Broadway and Vallejo. Cofounder Kiki Theodorides told the San Francisco Standard in April that she and her husband, Rich D'Aloia, had secured the space and were moving quickly, saying, "Cross our fingers, we should open in the next 60 to 90 days." By midsummer, coverage still described the opening as imminent rather than confirmed, so the safest thing to say as of this fall is that it's arriving, not that it has already arrived.
One difference between this new shop and the two businesses that closed before it is the supply chain behind it. Bageletto already runs a production kitchen on 14th Street that bakes bagels all day and delivers them to its retail counter within one to four hours of coming out of the oven, according to Theodorides. The Polk Street location won't be its own bagel factory. It will be a sit-down cafe, with fresh batches trucked in from the Mission kitchen twice a day or more, stocked with classics like sesame and everything alongside specialty flavors such as Calabrian chile and cheese, plus sandwiches built on house-cured meats. The Bagelry was a dedicated bagel shop on the block. Bageletto is bringing an existing Mission operation to Polk Street.
That distinction matters on this block, where a grocery store has opened while a bakery and a coffee chain have also closed in recent years.
While the daytime side of the block has been the harder puzzle, the evening side has quietly been solved for a while. Saru Handroll Bar has operated a couple of blocks north at 2206 Polk since November 2022, serving single-roll-at-a-time temaki in a wraparound bar format. It's part of a broader cluster of handroll spots that have opened across the city's northern neighborhoods over the past year, and it has continued operating at that location under the Saru name.
Now a second dinner option is heading to the immediate area. Johnny Le, who owns Thanh Tam II in the Mission, is working on a Vietnamese restaurant in the former Cocotte space on Hyde Street, one block over from Polk. It's not his only bet on this pocket of the city this year. Le also picked up the former Del Popolo space on Nob Hill after that pizzeria's owner, Jon Darsky, shifted his business to frozen pizza exclusively. Two separate expansion projects, both landing within a few blocks of each other, from an operator who already has a restaurant running elsewhere in the city. That's a different signal than a single new restaurant opening. It's an operator who's decided this general area is worth two bets in the same year.
Put the dinner side of the ledger together and the corridor already had a handroll bar closing in on four years in business holding down one end of the evening and now has a second sit-down restaurant on the way one street over. That side of the day has been functioning for a while. What's been missing is everything else.
FITNESS SF Polk is set to open this fall in Polk Gulch, serving what its own materials describe as the Polk Gulch, Russian Hill, and Nob Hill corridor. It's being positioned as the only locally owned gym of its scale in San Francisco, with a recovery area that includes red light therapy pods, infrared saunas, arctic showers, and massage chairs alongside standard equipment.
A gym is a different kind of bet than a restaurant or a bakery. A restaurant can survive on occasional visits and word of mouth. A gym only works if people come back on a schedule, week after week, which means an operator opening one nearby is betting that enough people in the surrounding neighborhoods will make the trip to Polk Gulch regularly to support a membership model. That's a harder case to make than opening a bagel counter, and it would add a different kind of option to the mix, built around repeat visits.
Consider what's changing along this stretch of Russian Hill and in the nearby Polk Gulch corridor this year. A grocery store with a 26-year lease already two years into proving itself. A bagel shop backed by an established Mission kitchen joining a block where a local bakery and a national coffee chain have both closed. A handroll bar nearing four years in business joined by a second restaurant from an operator already running another expansion project in the surrounding neighborhoods. And nearby in Polk Gulch, a gym is planned to add a regular-visit option to the corridor.
None of these businesses opened because of the others. Bi-Rite signed its lease years before Bageletto ever looked at the block. FITNESS SF's timeline has nothing to do with Johnny Le's restaurant plans. Taken together, the businesses already operating and the planned openings could broaden the options on and near this stretch: morning coffee and bagels, midday grocery runs, and evening dining nearby. The planned gym in Polk Gulch would add a reason to return on a schedule, extending the mix across the corridor.
If you own a building along this stretch of Polk Street, or anywhere else in Russian Hill, and you're weighing what a changing storefront mix does to your property's value, The Bonn Webb Team offers a complimentary, confidential valuation for San Francisco multifamily and mixed-use owners.
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