Hello friends,
It’s been a minute. Hope you relaxed and ate well over the winter holidays.
With so many of us cooped up inside, I thought I’d offer up some ideas of where to venture out.
2025 openings and closings
To wrap up Rochester’s food scene in 2025, there were so many business openings that I divided them into three stories. A lot of people tell me they clip or bookmark these stories to give themselves a list of new places to go during the upcoming months. Taken together, they could give a new place to visit each week in 2026!
- 13 new bars that opened in 2025
- 18 new coffee shops that opened in 2025
- More than 30 new restaurants that opened in 2025
Combined, this is more openings than in years past; 2024’s story had 40 and 2023 had 28. While these numbers are more anecdotal than scientific, it’s interesting that so many food and drink establishments are opening, given that owners tell me the business environment is getting tougher and tougher…