The Facts

The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote in February on Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s proposal to expand and extend the city’s retail-hours restriction pilot that bars certain retail food/tobacco stores from operating overnight.

According to Gabe Greschler at The San Francisco Standard, officials say inspections and investigations have turned up cash, meth, firearms, and slot machines in some Tenderloin corner stores—fueling the case to expand the curfew into parts of SoMa.

City Attorney David Chiu’s office has used civil enforcement to target repeat offenders; in one example, the city moved to shut down SF Discount Market and Tenderloin Market & Deli after an SFPD investigation found illegal gambling and contraband.

The Context

The current Tenderloin curfew was created by the 2024 Ordinance 129-24, which set a two-year pilot (through July 2026) and allows penalties of up to $1,000 per hour of violation.

A peer-reviewed study in Security Journal analyzing SFPD incident data found drug-related incidents fell during the restricted overnight hours after the pilot began.

The GrowSF Take

We agree there are real problems with a small number of bad actors, but we’re not convinced that expanding a blanket curfew is the right solution. The city has identified specific stores allegedly selling contraband and attracting crime—so target those businesses with aggressive enforcement and rapid nuisance abatement, up to and including closure.

Blanket restrictions are the wrong tool: they punish legitimate small businesses and risk pushing activity to the next block. San Francisco should enforce the laws we already have, shut down offenders fast, and let compliant businesses operate.