San Francisco could be home to the Bay Area's first Amsterdam-style cannabis café by next summer — the payoff of a decade-long gamble that only survived because Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a consumption-lounge ordinance into law last week.

The ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor and Board President Rafael Mandelman, rewrites the city's planning code to let licensed cannabis retailers serve food, non-alcoholic drinks and stage live entertainment — implementing a 2024 state law, Assembly Bill 1775, authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney. For William Dolan, whose bid to open at 560 Valencia St. has dragged on for roughly ten years, the café component isn't a garnish; it's the difference between a viable business and a shuttered one, as dispensary profit margins across the city have been cut in half.

San Francisco just handed its saturated cannabis market a new business model, and one Mission District entrepreneur has spent nearly a decade positioning himself to be first through the door.

According to Mission Local, which first reported the development, William Dolan — a real estate advisor and owner of HYRBA, a cannabis dispensary in the Sunset — is now on track to open one of the city's first cannabis cafés, and possibly the very first in the Bay Area, at 560 Valencia St. between 16th and 17th streets. If his permits clear, he told the outlet, construction could begin in early September, with doors opening in the summer of 2027.

What changed his fortunes was a signature. Last week Mayor Daniel Lurie signed an ordinance, introduced in March by District 8 Supervisor and Board President Rafael Mandelman, that amends the planning code to permit "Amsterdam-style" cafés where patrons can consume cannabis on site alongside food, non-alcoholic beverages and live entertainment. The measure implements Assembly Bill 1775, a 2024 state law by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) that cleared the way for such lounges statewide. San Francisco is, so far, the first city in the Bay Area to actually change its code to allow them.

The timing was no accident. Dolan filed to add a limited restaurant to his storefront in November 2025 — four months before Mandelman even introduced the legislation — betting the ordinance would pass. He had also lobbied for the concept alongside Haney and Mandelman, and told Mission Local he made himself available as a resource to legislators through the process. Had the measure failed, he said, he risked losing the project outright. The café, in his telling, is what makes it stand out in a crowded field.

That crowding is the whole point. The trade journal Cann Intel, cited by Mission Local, reported that average profit margins at San Francisco dispensaries fell from about 20 percent to 10 percent between 2020 and 2025. "Consumption lounges can command premium pricing," the journal wrote, projecting per-person spending of $45 to $75 at a lounge. Cann Intel estimates 12 to 18 cannabis cafés could open in the city by mid-2027, clustered in the Mission, SoMa and Haight-Ashbury.

Mandelman has framed the cafés as an economic-recovery play. "Cannabis cafés are part of this city's recovery, right alongside our entertainment zones, neighborhood activation, and free concerts, and today's vote makes sure our legal retailers aren't left behind," he said in a press release. "Amsterdam draws real tourism dollars from its cannabis cafés, and while San Francisco isn't Amsterdam, there's no reason our operators shouldn't have the same tools to compete." Mission Local notes Mandelman also sponsored legislation suspending the city's cannabis tax until 2036.

Dolan's project carries an equity dimension that predates the ordinance. Per Mission Local, he qualifies as an equity applicant under the city's program. He held community outreach meetings starting in 2020, and signed a set of commitments to prioritize hiring local residents, people with disabilities, and people previously arrested on non-violent marijuana charges. He also pledged to pay at least $20 an hour. And he agreed to carve out a 328-square-foot area inside the roughly 5,000-square-foot space for local entrepreneurs to sell goods.

There's a procedural clock, too: city policy legislation takes 31 days after the mayor's signature to become law. The Office of Cannabis has issued 79 retail permits citywide, 66 of them active earlier this year, with seven in the Mission. Dolan's, still processing, would make eight — the first, if all goes to plan, where the smoking is meant to happen on the premises.