San Vicente's Proving Ground: Who Left, Who Arrived, and Who's Next in Brentwood

This year, San Vicente Boulevard lost the bagel shop that gave one Los Angeles brand its start. It gained the largest location yet of a three-year-old smashburger company, and it is waiting on the first storefront of a sandwich-and-coffee concept from a founder who came out of luxury fashion e-commerce. In the space of about six months, three young food businesses used the same mile of Brentwood to start out or to expand.

This stretch of San Vicente works as a proving ground for small, founder-led Los Angeles brands, and every food change on it in 2026 fits that role.

The 2026 sequence, in order

1. April 30. Pop's Bagels closed its original shop at 11928 San Vicente after five years, according to the Santa Monica Mirror.
2. May 15. Pop's opened its replacement at 912 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, in the former B&T's Deli space.
3. October 3. Burger She Wrote opened at 11686 San Vicente Blvd. with a grand opening party that was open to the public.
4. Winter 2026. Sacco is scheduled to open at 11677 San Vicente Blvd. inside Brentwood Gardens.

The two newest addresses are close together. Burger She Wrote at 11686 and Sacco at 11677 are both on the 11600 block, on opposite sides of the street. Pop's old shop at 11928 is a few blocks west.

The shop that proved a brand, then moved two miles

Pop's Bagels is the clearest example of what this street has done for a young business. Owner Zach Liporace started with pop-ups, baking bagels one at a time in a mini oven, before opening a storefront. Santa Monica Mirror reported that the San Vicente shop came first, and that he said the brand's Culver City, Fairfax and Beverly Hills locations would not have been possible without the Brentwood community behind it.

In a closing video described by Westside Current, Liporace said opening the shop took "a huge risk and a big leap of faith."

"This little community in this little shop is a huge part of our success," he said. "We couldn't have done the other shops at the same time without this one being a success."

The new Montana Avenue shop is about five minutes' drive from Brentwood, and Liporace called it "just a couple of miles away." Westside Current reported that he hopes to find another space in Brentwood eventually while keeping the Santa Monica shop. So the April closing looks more like a relocation than a goodbye. A brand that grew up on San Vicente took what it learned a few miles west and left the door open to come back.

The burger counter that chose San Vicente for its biggest shop

Burger She Wrote came to Brentwood five months after Pop's left, at a similar stage of growth. Don "Nuge" Nguyen, a professional skateboarder and designer, co-founded the brand in 2021 with restaurateur Steven Arroyo and Mikayel Israyelyan of Muse Lifestyle Group. The San Vicente shop is its third location, after the original on Beverly Boulevard and a Sherman Oaks location that opened in May. Beverly Press reported that Silver Lake and Manhattan Beach are planned next.

The brand made Brentwood its largest location, and it is still small. Beverly Press puts the count at about 25 seats across indoor, outdoor and counter seating. Israyelyan told Westside Current why the company picked this street: "We want to choose a location that has a strong community. That's very important for us. We want to be the neighborhood burger shop." In the same piece, he said he wanted to "expand slowly and not expand where it will be outside our control."

That is close to how Pop's described its own Brentwood years. Both brands talk about the neighborhood as the reason the bet works.

What to know before you walk in:

• What to order. The Oklahoma Smash Burger is the standout. It's a nod to the 1920s method of smashing thin-sliced onions into the patty, here made with Snake River Farms American wagyu, grilled onions, the house sauce and a King's Hawaiian bun.
• The rest of the menu. Classic and Impossible smashburgers, grilled cheese, fries, Mexican sodas, and ranch, spicy mayonnaise and barbecue sauces made in-house.
• The room. Green, blue, beige and white tile, hand-painted menus, neon signs and photography by Atiba Jefferson, Ed Templeton and Estevan Oriol. "Each wall is different. It's kind of like a different art gallery at each shop," Nguyen told Westside Current.
• Hours. 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, at Burger She Wrote, 11686 San Vicente Blvd.

On Fridays and Saturdays, the kitchen keeps serving until 11 p.m.

A first storefront, in a space with history

Sacco is the next arrival, and it starts from an earlier stage than either neighbor. Burger She Wrote came to San Vicente with two shops behind it. Pop's left with four. Sacco is opening its first location here. According to What Now Los Angeles, owner Giuseppe Sacco co-founded the luxury fashion marketplace Italist and left that company in 2025. The new concept draws on his Sicilian heritage and his years living in Milan, New York, Paris and Los Angeles.

The announced plan centers on sandwiches. Coffee will be served from breakfast through the afternoon, with a small selection of salads. Sacco has also described a design side. The plan is to develop the space, packaging and uniforms under one brand identity, and a line called Sacco Editions will release objects and collaborations tied to design and culture. More menu details are expected closer to the opening. For now, the only timing given is "Winter 2026," and nothing has been announced about an exact date.

The space comes with history. Sacco is moving into the former Ron Herman store at Brentwood Gardens. Ron Herman, the Los Angeles specialty boutique, closed its San Vicente store in October 2023, according to Vernon Proper. That same year, its Malibu Country Mart shop closed and its Melrose Avenue store was expected to follow. The report said the company had not explained the mainland closures, and parent company Sazaby League declined to comment.

A fashion boutique gives way to a concept that sells food along with designed goods, run by a founder whose background is fashion retail. That is about as direct a handoff as this street could produce.

Sacco will join a Brentwood Gardens lineup that already includes Cafe Landwer, Club Pilates, Ospi and Drybar. If Sacco opens on schedule, the 11600 block will have a sandwich-and-coffee counter that closes in the afternoon across the street from a burger counter that stays open late.

What the pattern means for the next vacancy

Each of the three businesses is at a different point of the same arc. Pop's grew up here and moved two miles west, saying it hopes to return. Burger She Wrote arrived as a careful expansion and talks about San Vicente as a community it wants to belong to. Sacco is betting its first storefront on the street.

What the three share is scale. None is a national chain, and each is tied publicly to a named founder: Liporace, Nguyen and Israyelyan, and Sacco. On San Vicente, that seems to be what a new arrival looks like.

That suggests how to read the next new sign on this mile, including whatever replaces Pop's at 11928 San Vicente. In 2026, the businesses that came to this street were small Los Angeles brands looking for a neighborhood that would support them while they grew. Pop's has said it hopes to find another Brentwood space, and Sacco's winter opening is the next date on the street's calendar.

At Team Pinckert, we follow streets like San Vicente block by block, because the shops a few minutes' walk from a front door are a big part of how a Brentwood home is lived in. If you are thinking about selling near San Vicente and want a listing that reflects the street as it is this fall, we would be glad to talk it through with you.