What businesses are most in demand in Greektown?

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

Is Greektown a good place to start a business?

Greektown is ranked number 55 across neighborhoods in and around Chicago to start a business, with an average Survivability Score of ~81%. Choosing an optimal address for the highest-ranked business types in Greektown can produce survivability scores up to ~2% above the neighborhood mean.

Business Survivability in Greektown, Chicago

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

April 24, 2026•18 min read

Quick Summary

Best business: a Filipino Restaurant in Greektown (~88% average survival rate, ~90% at best locations)

Neighborhood rank: #55 across all neighborhoods in and around Chicago

Neighborhood average: ~81% two-year survival across all business types

Rankings updated quarterly with latest market data

Detailed methodology

Last reviewed: April 24, 2026 by Bobby Koons, Founder & CEO, StreetSpring

In this article:

Summary
Is Greektown 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 Greektown is a Filipino Restaurant with a ~88% chance of surviving at least 2 years across the neighborhood on average, with the best locations offering a ~90% chance; next is an Ukrainian Restaurant with a ~88% chance, followed by an Italian Restaurant with a ~88% chance.

Should you open a business in Greektown?

**Pattern match:** Greektown's neighborhood signature — captured across demographic, employment, and amenity features — most closely matches **Lake Dot (Orlando)** and **Locust Point Industrial Area (Baltimore)**. The three share blue-collar job mix, high high-earner share, and higher-income, which helps explain why business types that succeed in those areas tend to translate to Greektown.

**The pattern in Greektown.** Of 93 tracked subtypes, Filipino Restaurant leads at **88% average survivability** — yet within the neighborhood, sites for this subtype range **76-96%** (20-point spread). That spread is the real failure surface: pick the wrong block in Greektown and a top-subtype play still scores in the bottom quartile. Meanwhile Italian Restaurants are already saturated here — 1 competitors within a 0.5-mile radius.

StreetSpring ranks Greektown #55 among all analyzed neighborhoods in and around Chicago, with a neighborhood-wide average survivability of ~81%.

Choosing an optimal address for the highest-ranked business types in Greektown can produce survivability scores up to ~2% above the neighborhood mean.
But at poorly chosen addresses within Greektown, even the top-ranked business types can fall well below the neighborhood average. Location selection remains critical — a promising concept at the wrong spot still carries significant risk.
Greektown's 4.9% 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.

Which blocks in Greektown offer the strongest survivability?

Using StreetSpring, you can identify the exact address in Greektown that gives your specific business concept the highest survivability score. The map below highlights the highest-survivability address for a Filipino Restaurant in Greektown:

Reading visibility, frontage, and parking carefully

Loading live map preview...

Per StreetSpring's 2026 dataset, this circle traces the top-performing area for a Filipino Restaurant in Greektown. Market conditions, new competitors, and local spending patterns can change rapidly — always verify with StreetSpring's live tool before signing a lease. StreetSpring's prediction model analyzes 100 factors across competition, spending on the specific potential business, projected revenue, projected market share, Revenue Capture Score, mobility patterns, and many more.

Check if this location is still available →

What are the best businesses to open in Greektown?

#1-5: Highest Survivability in Greektown

Filipino Restaurant is ranked #1 for top businesses to open in Greektown: ~88% chance on average, best at ~90%, challenging at ~86%.
Ukrainian Restaurant — ~86%–~90% survivability range, with an average of ~88% across Greektown.
Opening an Italian Restaurant in Greektown shows ~88% average survivability. Top locations reach ~90%; lower-end sites show ~87%.
American Restaurant (Ranked #4): ~88% average in Greektown. Best-case storefronts: ~90%. Challenging locations: ~86%.
French Restaurant is ranked #5 for top businesses to open in Greektown: ~88% chance on average, best at ~90%, challenging at ~87%.

#6-10: Strong Performers in Greektown

Bangladeshi Restaurant — ~86%–~90% survivability range, with an average of ~88% across Greektown.
Opening a South American Restaurant in Greektown shows ~88% average survivability. Top locations reach ~90%; lower-end sites show ~86%.
Deli (Ranked #8): ~88% average in Greektown. Best-case storefronts: ~90%. Challenging locations: ~86%.
Chinese Restaurant is ranked #9 for top businesses to open in Greektown: ~88% chance on average, best at ~89%, challenging at ~86%.
Indonesian Restaurant — ~87%–~90% survivability range, with an average of ~88% across Greektown.

Top 3 Compared Nationally

Filipino Restaurant — See how this compares to other cities →

How much money could a business in Greektown make?

Best location vs. average location

Based on StreetSpring's 2026 analysis, securing a location with maximum Revenue Capture potential in Greektown could lead to you making ~2% more than if you selected an average location, and ~4% more than if you selected one of the worst locations.

How StreetSpring calculates location value

Location fit is business-type-specific: a spot that's ideal for a coffee shop may underperform for a nail salon at the same address.
The address you choose determines your competitive exposure, customer flow, and spending potential simultaneously.
StreetSpring's analysis shows that businesses in top-scoring locations generate meaningfully more revenue and stay open longer than those in average locations.
Two storefronts on the same street can have survivability scores that differ by 20 points or more — StreetSpring calculates each one individually.

What businesses should open next in Greektown?

The top businesses to open next in Greektown:

Filipino Restaurants — ~88% average survival rate, up to ~90% at best locations
Ukrainian Restaurants — ~88% average survival rate
Italian Restaurants — ~88% average survival rate

Market conditions, new competitors, and local spending patterns can change rapidly — always verify with StreetSpring's live tool before signing a lease. Every prediction draws on a dataset of millions of business openings, closures, and lifecycle events across the U.S. Greektown sits at 96.2% employment and 4.9% commercial vacancy — conditions that set the ceiling and floor for Revenue Capture potential across all business types here. These rankings are a snapshot; StreetSpring recalculates survivability for every location in Greektown weekly, incorporating the latest competitive openings, closures, and spending data — check current locations now.

See the Survivability Score for your new business

Related Articles:

See the Chicago Business Survivability Rankings
See the Chicago Neighborhood Survivability Rankings

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

Our 2026 survivability data for Greektown shows that Filipino Restaurants, Ukrainian Restaurants, and Italian Restaurants rank as the top tenant categories for minimizing vacancy risk.

The address you choose determines your competitive exposure, customer flow, and spending potential simultaneously.
Two storefronts on the same street can have survivability scores that differ by 20 points or more — StreetSpring calculates each one individually. With StreetSpring, you can rank every potential tenant type by survivability score at your property address before committing to a lease.

Should you rent your Greektown storefront to a Filipino Restaurant?

StreetSpring's 2026 analysis strongly supports renting to a Filipino Restaurant in Greektown: best-in-class addresses achieve ~90% survivability, and even the lower-end sites come in at ~86% — above average for most business types.

Two storefronts on the same street can have survivability scores that differ by 20 points or more — StreetSpring calculates each one individually.

What should I consider when opening a business in Greektown?

StreetSpring's Survivability Score for your Greektown address is the clearest forward-looking indicator of whether your business will be operating two years from now — make it the first number you check.

A strong Revenue Capture Score reflects the ideal balance of manageable competition and robust consumer spending at that specific address.
No third-party scoring system produces these results — every prediction is generated by StreetSpring's own analytical models.
Access StreetSpring's current survivability data for any address in Greektown for free at any time.

See the best place for your business at StreetSpring.

StreetSpring analyzes millions of data points with AI to forecast business survivability. Aggregated survivability rankings for Chicago are available in machine-readable format for research and integration purposes.

The hidden costs of operating in this neighborhood

Factor	Where new owners get tripped up	Questions to ask before you sign
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.
Anchor co-tenancy	Signing next to a high-traffic anchor that closes 6 months later, leaving you orphaned.	Ask for a co-tenancy clause — rent abatement or termination right if the anchor leaves. Standard for strong markets.
Competitor density	Counting only direct competitors and missing adjacent-category overlap (e.g. coffee shop near a bakery).	Map all businesses serving overlapping customer needs within a 5-min walk. Use StreetSpring's competitor view as a starting point.

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

Visual Data

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

Treemap of Chicago business mix by survivability score — Treemap of business mix in Chicago — cell size = number of locations, color = average survivability score.

Radar chart of business-subtype survivability in Greektown, Chicago — Top business types scored in Greektown, Chicago — each axis is a subtype, taller = stronger survival rate.

How we measure this: Annual rent / estimated annual revenue = rent burden ratio. Industry rule of thumb: above 12% is uncomfortable, above 18% is fatal.

**About this neighborhood.** Greektown is a social and dining district, located on the Near West Side of Chicago. Today, Greektown consists mostly of restaurants and businesses, although a cultural museum and an annual parade and festival still remain in the neighborhood. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greektown%2C_Chicago).

**Daytime worker density (Greektown):** LEHD LODES Workplace Area Characteristics show a **29.2:1 daytime-to-resident ratio** for Greektown — a strong commercial-corridor / CBD signal. Median workplace jobs within a 1-mile radius across Greektown: **471,207**, of which roughly **6,464** are retail-sector. Higher daytime ratios favor weekday-lunch / commuter-traffic businesses; balanced ratios favor residential + weekend demand patterns.

Landmark anchor: Greektown hosts Chicago History, a history-museum that gives the neighborhood a cultural-destination layer most blocks don't have.

**Local economic context (Greektown, Chicago):** Greektown's ACS unemployment rate is **3.8%** (below the 24-metro neighborhood median). County-level data adds two more anchors: BLS QCEW reports Chicago-area average weekly wage of **$1,198** (below our 24-metro median), and the Census Bureau Building Permits Survey logged **5,308** new residential units in Cook County in 2025 — a rough proxy for the local growth environment a new business is opening into.

**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.

Related Resources

Related:

Business Survivability in Greektown, Baltimore

Related:

Local Data Questions

More questions answered with neighborhood-specific data from our 2026 corpus.

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

ACS data shows 90% of adults in Greektown with a bachelor's degree or higher, versus the metro median of 52%. A highly educated population tends to support specialty retail, premium services, and professional offices.

What is the median age in Greektown, and what does that mean for businesses?

Greektown's median age is 32 versus a Chicago metro median of 37 — younger by 5 years. This shapes which business types tend to survive: A younger profile tends to drive demand for nightlife, fitness, and casual dining over family-oriented services.

How does economic hardship in Greektown compare to the metro?

ACS data shows 8% of Greektown residents below the federal poverty line, versus 12% metro-wide. The poverty rate tracks the metro median; business-type fit depends more on competition and demographic specifics.

Is Greektown a high-employment or high-unemployment area?

Roughly 96% of Greektown's working-age population is employed, against a Chicago metro median of 94%. A strong employment rate signals steadier local spending and lower retail churn.