Is Haverhill a good place to start a business?

Haverhill is ranked number 2 across neighborhoods in and around Boston to start a business, with an average Survivability Score of ~80%. Best-case locations for the top business types in Haverhill produce survivability scores ~2% above the neighborhood-wide average.

What are the best businesses to open in Haverhill?

The top businesses to open in Haverhill include Ukrainian Restaurant with a ~88% chance on average of surviving more than 2 years, best-case locations reaching ~91%, followed by Italian Restaurant and Indonesian Restaurant.

How much money could a business in Haverhill make?

Based on StreetSpring's 2026 analysis, selecting one of the best locations in Haverhill could lead to making ~2% more than selecting an average location, and ~5% more than one of the worst locations.

What businesses are most in demand in Haverhill?

Based on StreetSpring's 2026 survivability analysis, the most in-demand business types in Haverhill are Ukrainian Restaurants, Italian Restaurants, and Indonesian Restaurants.

Business Survivability in Haverhill, Boston

StreetSpring's 2026 analysis finds that the best business to open in Haverhill is an Ukrainian Restaurant with a ~88% chance of surviving at least 2 years across the neighborhood on average.

April 24, 2026•17 min read

Quick Summary

Best business: an Ukrainian Restaurant in Haverhill (~88% average survival rate, ~91% at best locations)

Neighborhood rank: #2 across all neighborhoods in and around Boston

Neighborhood average: ~80% two-year survival across all business types

Rankings updated quarterly with latest market data

Detailed methodology

Last reviewed by Bobby Koons, Founder & CEO, StreetSpring — May 2, 2026

In this article:

Summary
Is Haverhill a good place to start a business?
How to find the best location
Best businesses to open
How much money could a business make?
What businesses should open next?
Frequently Asked Questions

Summary

StreetSpring's 2026 analysis finds that the best business to open in Haverhill is an Ukrainian Restaurant with a ~88% chance of surviving at least 2 years across the neighborhood on average, with the best locations offering a ~91% chance; next is an Italian Restaurant with a ~88% chance, followed by an Indonesian Restaurant with a ~88% chance.

Is Haverhill the right neighborhood for a new business?

**Pattern match:** Haverhill's neighborhood signature — captured across demographic, employment, and amenity features — most closely matches **Fraser (Detroit)** and **Imperial Beach (San Diego)**. The three share less college-educated, less transit-reliant, and older housing stock, which helps explain why business types that succeed in those areas tend to translate to Haverhill.

**The pattern in Haverhill.** Of 93 tracked subtypes, Italian Restaurant leads at **88% average survivability** — yet within the neighborhood, sites for this subtype range **71-99%** (28-point spread). That spread is the real failure surface: pick the wrong block in Haverhill and a top-subtype play still scores in the bottom quartile. Meanwhile Gyms are already saturated here — 5 competitors within a 0.5-mile radius.

Across all neighborhoods in and around Boston, StreetSpring's data places Haverhill at #2 with a ~80% average Survivability Score.

Best-case locations for the top business types in Haverhill produce survivability scores ~2% above the neighborhood-wide average.
Yet the same categories that score highest in Haverhill can underperform significantly at the wrong address. Location precision within the neighborhood matters as much as choosing the neighborhood itself.
Haverhill's 5.6% commercial vacancy rate signals the current availability of storefronts and shapes the competitive environment that survivability scores reflect.

Employment and vacancy figures sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.

How can you find the best location to open a business in Haverhill?

StreetSpring scores survivability at the exact address level in Haverhill — so you can compare two storefronts on the same block before committing to a lease. StreetSpring's 2026 analysis identifies this area as the top location for an Ukrainian Restaurant in Haverhill:

Anchor tenants that lift survival odds

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Based on StreetSpring's 2026 analysis of 100 location-specific factors, this area offers the highest projected survivability for an Ukrainian Restaurant in Haverhill. StreetSpring's survivability scores are updated regularly, so the most accurate prediction for your exact storefront is always available in the live tool. Factors evaluated include competition at every distance band, consumer spending forecasts, mobility patterns, and market share projections.

Check if this location is still available →

Top-ranked business types for Haverhill

#1-5: Highest Survivability in Haverhill

Opening an Ukrainian Restaurant in Haverhill shows ~88% average survivability. Top locations reach ~91%; lower-end sites show ~86%.
Italian Restaurant (Ranked #2): ~88% average in Haverhill. Best-case storefronts: ~90%. Challenging locations: ~87%.
Indonesian Restaurant is ranked #3 for top businesses to open in Haverhill: ~88% chance on average, best at ~90%, challenging at ~86%.
Filipino Restaurant — ~86%–~89% survivability range, with an average of ~88% across Haverhill.
Opening a Singaporean Restaurant in Haverhill shows ~88% average survivability. Top locations reach ~90%; lower-end sites show ~86%.

#6-10: Strong Performers in Haverhill

Brunch Restaurant (Ranked #6): ~88% average in Haverhill. Best-case storefronts: ~90%. Challenging locations: ~86%.
Taiwanese Restaurant is ranked #7 for top businesses to open in Haverhill: ~88% chance on average, best at ~90%, challenging at ~86%.
South American Restaurant — ~86%–~90% survivability range, with an average of ~88% across Haverhill.
Opening a French Restaurant in Haverhill shows ~88% average survivability. Top locations reach ~89%; lower-end sites show ~86%.
American Restaurant (Ranked #10): ~88% average in Haverhill. Best-case storefronts: ~89%. Challenging locations: ~86%.

Top 3 Compared Nationally

How location selection in Haverhill affects revenue

Best location vs. average location

Based on StreetSpring's 2026 analysis, selecting one of the best locations for your business in Haverhill could lead to you making ~2% more than if you selected an average location, and ~5% more than if you selected one of the worst locations.

How StreetSpring calculates location value

However, each business concept should be evaluated for fit within each potential location.
A great product in the wrong location will underperform; an average product in the right location can thrive.
Maximizing your Survivability Score is the most reliable path to profitability.
No other tool calculates survivability at the storefront level across 700+ business types the way StreetSpring does.

What Haverhill needs more of (per our model)

The top businesses to open next in Haverhill:

Ukrainian Restaurants — ~88% average survival rate, up to ~91% at best locations
Italian Restaurants — ~88% average survival rate
Indonesian Restaurants — ~88% average survival rate

StreetSpring's survivability scores are updated regularly, so the most accurate prediction for your exact storefront is always available in the live tool. Our platform incorporates data from thousands of neighborhoods nationwide. StreetSpring's model accounts for Haverhill's 93.9% employment rate when projecting survivability — businesses reliant on discretionary spend benefit disproportionately in well-employed neighborhoods. Survivability scores are recalculated weekly as new competitors open and spending patterns shift — visit StreetSpring to see the current score for any open location in Haverhill right now.

See the Survivability Score for your new business

Related Articles:

See the Boston Business Survivability Rankings
See the Boston Neighborhood Survivability Rankings

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the most common questions about opening a business in Haverhill.

What type of business should you rent your Haverhill storefront to?

For landlords in Haverhill, StreetSpring's 2026 analysis identifies Ukrainian Restaurants, Italian Restaurants, and Indonesian Restaurants as the business types most likely to produce stable, long-term tenancy.

A great product in the wrong location will underperform; an average product in the right location can thrive.
No other tool calculates survivability at the storefront level across 700+ business types the way StreetSpring does. Run your specific address through StreetSpring to see which tenant categories give you the best odds of stable, long-term occupancy.

Should you rent your Haverhill storefront to an Ukrainian Restaurant?

Yes — our 2026 model places an Ukrainian Restaurant at the top of the survivability rankings for Haverhill storefronts, with a best-case score of ~91% and a floor of ~86% at the most challenging addresses.

No other tool calculates survivability at the storefront level across 700+ business types the way StreetSpring does.

What should I consider when opening a business in Haverhill?

In Haverhill, the single most important factor in your site-selection decision is the Survivability Score of the specific address you're evaluating.

Revenue Capture Score is the single best indicator of whether a business will thrive at a location.
These predictions are generated by StreetSpring's proprietary machine learning system, validated against hundreds of thousands of real business outcomes.
You can check the Survivability Score for any storefront in Haverhill at no cost using StreetSpring's live tool.

See the best place for your business at StreetSpring.

StreetSpring's AI platform has analyzed thousands of business openings to identify success patterns. Aggregated survivability rankings for Boston are available in machine-readable format for research and integration purposes.

Build-out budget rules-of-thumb for this neighborhood

Factor	Where new owners get tripped up	Questions to ask before you sign
Outdoor seating / sidewalk use	Signing assuming you can add patio seating, then learning the city requires a separate sidewalk-cafe permit with long lead times.	Check the city's sidewalk-cafe permit process up front. Confirm landlord allows outdoor build-out in the lease language.
Workforce availability	Hiring radius is smaller than you think — many neighborhoods can't staff a full team at standard wages.	Pull BLS wage data for your industry in this metro. Walk through your staffing plan with a local restaurant/retail operator before signing.
Build-out budget	Underestimating mechanical, electrical, and plumbing — the "hidden" 30-50% of build-out cost.	Get 3 quotes from licensed contractors and pad budget by +20% for surprises. Confirm landlord TI allowance in writing.

Full dataset for Boston: /resources/data/boston-survivability-scores-2026.csv — includes all business subtypes, all neighborhoods, survivability scores, and tier assignments. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Visual Data

Bubble chart of business subtypes in Boston by survivability score and location density — Every business subtype in Boston plotted by score vs location count — bubble size shows market depth.

Dumbbell chart comparing best vs worst locations for businesses in Boston — Best vs worst neighborhood per business type in Boston — the gap shows how much location choice matters for each subtype.

How we measure this: Supplier proximity matters more for some subtypes (restaurants, repair shops) than others (online-anchored retail).

**National benchmark:** Per BLS Business Employment Dynamics (March 2025), 5-year survival rates for StreetSpring's tracked industries span **47.8-61.8%**. Restaurants — the most-studied of these — survive at **50.0%** nationally, not the often-cited "80% fail" myth. The real risk premium is at the location level, which is what StreetSpring's model isolates.

**About this neighborhood.** Haverhill is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. Haverhill is located 35 miles (56 km) north of Boston on the New Hampshire border and about 17 miles (27 km) from the Atlantic Ocean. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haverhill%2C_Massachusetts).

**LEHD demand-pattern signal (Haverhill):** Median 1-mile workplace jobs around Haverhill grid points: **1,109** (LEHD LODES 2022). That works out to a **0.0:1 daytime-to-resident ratio** — a primarily-residential neighborhood with minimal daytime worker traffic. Of those workplace jobs, **60** are retail-sector. Use this to gauge whether your concept is weekday-commuter-driven or evening-and-weekend-driven.

Landmark anchor: Haverhill hosts Haverhill Firefighting Museum, a history-museum that gives the neighborhood a cultural-destination layer most blocks don't have.

**Haverhill economic snapshot:** ACS reports neighborhood unemployment at **6.1%** (above the 24-metro neighborhood median we track). The Boston metro's BLS QCEW average weekly wage is **$1,631** (above our metro median), and the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey logged **2,338** new residential permits in Suffolk County in 2025 — useful triangulation for population-growth and labor-cost assumptions in this neighborhood.

Related Resources

Related:

Local Data Questions

Additional questions with answers drawn directly from local data sources.

Does Haverhill's education level matter for picking a business type?

Approximately 30% of Haverhill adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 58% across the Boston metro. Lower education attainment shifts demand toward value retail, services, and everyday needs.

What's the typical commute pattern in Haverhill?

Haverhill's median commute (~29 min) is below the Boston metro median (32 min). Commute patterns are typical for the metro, so foot traffic timing should not be a primary differentiator.

Does ownership stability in Haverhill support steady local spending?

Home ownership in Haverhill is approximately 55%, versus the Boston metro median of 56%. The ownership profile is typical for the metro.

How does economic hardship in Haverhill compare to the metro?

13% of Haverhill households fall below the federal poverty line — above the Boston metro median (8%). Elevated poverty constrains discretionary retail; survivability is highest for essential services and value-oriented operators.