Drive down Wayzata Boulevard this month and you will see a city council packet come to life: renderings for a Shake Shack, a Sweetgreen, a Chipotle, and a Denver-based brunch chain called Snooze, all proposed for a stretch of pavement at 5775 Wayzata Boulevard. Drive across town to Minnetonka Boulevard and you will find something that looks nothing like that plan. A butcher counter with a line out the door, run by two people who spent three years working out of a food truck before finally getting a lease.
Both of these are St. Louis Park in August 2026. They are not competing versions of the same story. They are two different processes running on two different timelines, and the gap between them tells you something about how this city actually grows.
What's Open and What's Still on Paper
The chain corridor exists right now as a proposal. A Chicago-based developer's plans for 5775 Wayzata Boulevard cleared a St. Louis Park City Council recommendation earlier this year, with four national tenants attached to two single-story buildings. Nothing on that site is serving food yet.
Meanwhile, three genuinely new places have opened their doors in St. Louis Park in the past twelve months, and every one of them moved into a building that already had a history.
| New arrival | Corridor | Status as of August 2026 | What it replaced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweet Lou's Meats | Minnetonka Blvd | Open since May 27 | Nelson's Meats, Bakery & Deli (serving the area since 1965) |
| The Candy Shop | Excelsior Blvd | Open since Aug. 1 | Honey & Rye's former Bakehouse retail space |
| Chi-Chi's | Shops at West End | Open since Oct. 6, 2025 | Rojo Mexican Grill |
| Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Chipotle, Snooze | 5775 Wayzata Blvd | Still working through city approval as of February 2026 | Site plan pending, not yet built |
One side of this table is permits and renderings. The other side already has receipts.
The Meat Counter That Didn't Want To Disappear
Nelson's Meats, Bakery and Deli started in Hopkins in 1965 and moved to its Minnetonka Boulevard storefront in 2013, which means the address had been feeding this neighborhood for nearly sixty years before it changed hands. When the family decided to step away, Louisa Farhat and Tim Dubay were ready. They had spent three years building Sweet Lou's Craft Sausage & Butchery as a food truck, working local breweries and farmers markets and slowly earning a following that outgrew a truck's capacity.
The outgoing owner told Farhat he wanted to pass on the legacy of the space, and that is close to what happened. Sweet Lou's kept the deli's bones and expanded into a full butcher case, a breakfast menu, deli sandwiches, and a coffee program with baristas pulling shots alongside whole hogs coming through the back door. Mpls.St.Paul Magazine's first review, published in June, described customers showing up for a cup of coffee and watching a lamb, half a cow, and a hog arrive within the same morning. The Reuben and the foot-long hot dog, finished with melted brie and jam on a La Boulangerie bun, are already the two items people mention first.
This is not a story about a vacant storefront getting filled. It is a story about a food business inheriting sixty years of foot traffic and neighborhood trust, and choosing to keep both.
Two Weeks Old, Same Playbook
If Sweet Lou's is the established version of this pattern, The Candy Shop is the freshest example. It opened August 1 at 4615 Excelsior Boulevard, in the retail space that used to belong to Honey & Rye's Bakehouse. Owner Anne Andrus stocked it with imported Swedish candy, housemade confections, a modern take on the Swedish princess cake, and Italian sodas, according to the Star Tribune's restaurant roll call. Like Sweet Lou's, it did not require new construction. It required someone willing to take over a bakery's old retail footprint and turn it into something different but still recognizably a neighborhood sweet shop.
Two openings on two different streets, both choosing renovation over ground-breaking. That is not a coincidence at this point. It is close to the only way anything new has actually opened on Excelsior and Minnetonka this year.
West End's Second Act
The Shops at West End has been running its own version of this same idea, just with a bigger name attached. Boketto arrived first, a Kam Talebi steakhouse built around aqua tile and a DJ booth as its literal centerpiece, giving West End an early signal that it wanted to be more than a shopping center with a movie theater attached.
Then came Chi-Chi's. Michael McDermott, son of Chi-Chi's co-founder Marno McDermott, converted his own Rojo Mexican Grill at 1602 West End Boulevard into a flagship relaunch of the Tex-Mex chain his father started in Minnesota back in 1975. Chi-Chi's had closed in 2004 after a hepatitis A outbreak tied to green onions in its salsa, one of the largest such outbreaks in U.S. history, and had been gone from the market for two decades. More than 2,000 people invested over $2.3 million through an equity crowdfunding campaign to help bring it back, and when the doors opened on October 6, 2025, reservations were gone for weeks and wait times stretched past ninety minutes on some nights.
Chi-Chi's is about to hit its first anniversary in St. Louis Park, and it did it without moving addresses. Same building, same parking lot, same restaurateur. Just a different bet on what the neighborhood wanted to eat.
The Small Moves Nobody's Writing Headlines About
Not every change fits the two big stories. Over in Texa-Tonka, Westside Wine & Spirits recently added counter seating inside its market space, a small addition that turns a liquor store into a place where you might actually sit down. It is the kind of update that never gets its own press release but adds up with everything else happening on these older commercial strips right now.
The Rhythm If You Want to See It for Yourself
None of this requires waiting for a grand opening. St. Louis Park runs its own weekly schedule that has nothing to do with new construction.
- Market in the Valley farmers market sets up on Sundays starting at 9 a.m.
- The city's free Summer Concert Series, run with the St. Louis Park Rotary Club, plays through the season at Veterans Memorial Amphitheater on Monterey Drive
- Walk the Park meets the second Saturday of every month for a one to two mile group walk through the city's trail system
- Friends of the Arts partners with the city each year on the St. Louis Park Art Fair, open to all ages
None of these require a reservation or a ninety minute wait. They are the parts of the neighborhood that were already working before anyone drew up a rendering for Wayzata Boulevard.
What This Actually Tells You
A city can run two development tracks at once, and St. Louis Park is proof. One track is a developer's proposal for four fast-casual chains that has to clear approvals before it feeds anyone. The other track is a butcher counter, a candy shop, and a Tex-Mex chain's second chance, all of them choosing to move into a building someone else already broke in. The chains are betting on new ground. The independents are betting that the address itself still has value.
Both bets might pay off. Right now, only one side has customers.
If you're curious what else is changing block by block in St. Louis Park, or want a neighbor's read on how a specific street or corridor is holding up, The McNamara Group knows this stretch of the southwest suburbs as well as anyone. Get a Free Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk, or just reach out if you want to compare notes on where to eat next.
