San Francisco will once again transform City Hall into a festive marketplace as the annual Holiday Pop-Up event returns next week.

The event is scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 9, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is hosted by the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the Office of Small Business.

It highlights the city’s diverse small-business community and supports entrepreneurs during the peak holiday shopping season.

This year’s market is part of the newly expanded Shop Dine SF Holidays, San Francisco’s seasonal guide to neighborhood markets, tree lightings, and local shopping experiences. More than 50 vendors — ranging from women-owned and immigrant-owned makers to culturally rooted and emerging businesses — will offer handcrafted art, jewelry, specialty foods, clothing, and home goods inside City Hall.

The free public event is designed to boost visibility and foot traffic for local retailers.

“Pop-up shops are an important tool for many local makers — from neighborhood shops expanding their customer base to upstarts showcasing innovative new products,” said Katy Tang, director of the Office of Small Business.

A launchpad for local businesses

Business owners say the event can be a launchpad. Nina Veaco, owner of Cheeky Bits candy store, credits early City Hall pop-ups with helping her grow into a brick-and-mortar storefront in Embarcadero Center.

OEWD leaders say the expanded Shop Dine SF Holidays guide and growing lineup of festive markets give residents and visitors more ways to support local businesses.

In addition to the City Hall Pop-up, visitors can explore a growing lineup of festive, city-supported retail experiences, including the SFMade Holiday Pop-up Store at Two Embarcadero Center, Dogpatch Holiday Market, Fillmore Holiday Marketplace, and the Off the Grid Food Market at various locations around the Bay.

Full details are available on the City of San Francisco’s website.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.