What businesses are most in demand in Irving Woods?

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

Business Survivability in Irving Woods, Chicago

StreetSpring's 2026 analysis finds that the best business to open in Irving Woods is a Kosher Restaurant with a ~85% chance of surviving at least 2 years across the neighborhood on average.

April 24, 2026•17 min read

Quick Summary

Best business: a Kosher Restaurant in Irving Woods (~85% average survival rate, ~87% at best locations)

Neighborhood rank: #86 across all neighborhoods in and around Chicago

Neighborhood average: ~75% two-year survival across all business types

Rankings updated quarterly with latest market data

Detailed methodology

Last reviewed: April 27, 2026 by Bobby Koons, Founder & CEO, StreetSpring

In this article:

Summary
Is Irving Woods 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 Irving Woods is a Kosher Restaurant with a ~85% chance of surviving at least 2 years across the neighborhood on average, with the best locations offering a ~87% chance; next is an Italian Restaurant with a ~85% chance, followed by an Ukrainian Restaurant with a ~84% chance.

Is Irving Woods a good place to start a business?

**Where else does Irving Woods look like?** The strongest demographic and amenity-density matches are **Edna Park (Los Angeles)** and **Westfield (Baltimore)**, sharing low vacancy, older housing stock, and more homeowners. If you've worked in either of those neighborhoods, expect Irving Woods to behave similarly on the dimensions that drive survival.

**What goes wrong in Irving Woods.** Across 93 subtypes we track, **Filipino Restaurant averages 84%** — the highest in the neighborhood. Yet a site-level look shows Filipino Restaurants range from **74% to 90%** across Irving Woods — a 16-point window where the address, not the concept, decides the outcome. For competitive density: Bars are the most-concentrated tracked subtype (8 within 0.5 miles).

Out of all neighborhoods analyzed in and around Chicago, Irving Woods ranks #86 for business survivability with a ~75% average Survivability Score.

Choosing an optimal address for the highest-ranked business types in Irving Woods can produce survivability scores up to ~2% above the neighborhood mean.
But these same concepts at less optimal addresses within Irving Woods can score meaningfully below average. Survivability data shows that even the highest-demand business types fail at the wrong location.
StreetSpring's model incorporates Irving Woods's 4.0% vacancy rate as a direct input: higher vacancy concentrations suppress foot traffic and reduce survivability for nearby businesses.

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

Where in Irving Woods should you open a business?

The right address in Irving Woods can mean a 20-point survivability difference from an average one — StreetSpring identifies exactly which addresses are worth pursuing. The location below represents the address in Irving Woods with the highest projected survivability for a Kosher Restaurant:

Reading visibility, frontage, and parking carefully

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StreetSpring's 2026 data identifies this circle as the strongest area for a Kosher Restaurant in Irving Woods. The most reliable survivability data for any specific location is always StreetSpring's most recent live analysis, not aggregate neighborhood rankings. 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.

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What are the best businesses to open in Irving Woods?

#1-5: Highest Survivability in Irving Woods

Kosher Restaurant is ranked #1 for top businesses to open in Irving Woods: ~85% chance on average, best at ~87%, challenging at ~83%.
Italian Restaurant — ~83%–~86% survivability range, with an average of ~85% across Irving Woods.
Opening an Ukrainian Restaurant in Irving Woods shows ~84% average survivability. Top locations reach ~86%; lower-end sites show ~82%.
Filipino Restaurant (Ranked #4): ~84% average in Irving Woods. Best-case storefronts: ~85%. Challenging locations: ~82%.
Indonesian Restaurant is ranked #5 for top businesses to open in Irving Woods: ~84% chance on average, best at ~86%, challenging at ~82%.

#6-10: Strong Performers in Irving Woods

South American Restaurant — ~82%–~85% survivability range, with an average of ~84% across Irving Woods.
Opening an American Restaurant in Irving Woods shows ~83% average survivability. Top locations reach ~84%; lower-end sites show ~81%.
Salad Shop (Ranked #8): ~83% average in Irving Woods. Best-case storefronts: ~85%. Challenging locations: ~81%.
Diner is ranked #9 for top businesses to open in Irving Woods: ~83% chance on average, best at ~85%, challenging at ~81%.
Bangladeshi Restaurant — ~81%–~85% survivability range, with an average of ~82% across Irving Woods.

Top 3 Compared Nationally

How much money could a business in Irving Woods make?

Best location vs. average location

Based on StreetSpring's 2026 analysis, selecting a storefront that StreetSpring ranks in the top tier for your business type in Irving Woods 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

No two business types have identical location needs; survivability scores reflect these differences at the address level.
Site selection is the highest-leverage decision most entrepreneurs make — it sets every other variable in motion.
Maximizing your Survivability Score is the most reliable path to profitability.
StreetSpring analyzes your specific address against comparable businesses to forecast success.

What businesses should open next in Irving Woods?

The top businesses to open next in Irving Woods:

Kosher Restaurants — ~85% average survival rate, up to ~87% at best locations
Italian Restaurants — ~85% average survival rate
Ukrainian Restaurants — ~84% average survival rate

The most reliable survivability data for any specific location is always StreetSpring's most recent live analysis, not aggregate neighborhood rankings. We apply advanced machine learning to one of the largest commercial real estate outcome datasets in the country. StreetSpring's model accounts for Irving Woods's 94.4% employment rate when projecting survivability — businesses reliant on discretionary spend benefit disproportionately in well-employed neighborhoods. These rankings are a snapshot; StreetSpring recalculates survivability for every location in Irving Woods 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 Irving Woods.

What type of business should you rent your Irving Woods storefront to?

The analysis is clear: in Irving Woods, Kosher Restaurants, Italian Restaurants, and Ukrainian Restaurants consistently score highest on survivability, giving landlords the best chance of retaining tenants for 2+ years.

Site selection is the highest-leverage decision most entrepreneurs make — it sets every other variable in motion.
StreetSpring analyzes your specific address against comparable businesses to forecast success. StreetSpring can show you which specific address in your portfolio scores highest for each tenant type.

Should you rent your Irving Woods storefront to a Kosher Restaurant?

Yes, StreetSpring's analysis finds that a Kosher Restaurant would be the best type of business to rent your storefront to, with a potential ~87% chance of lasting more than 2 years; however depending on your location, the chances could drop to a ~83% chance.

StreetSpring analyzes your specific address against comparable businesses to forecast success.

What should I consider when opening a business in Irving Woods?

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

Of all the variables StreetSpring analyzes, Revenue Capture Score has the strongest predictive power.
These predictions are generated by StreetSpring's proprietary machine learning system, validated against hundreds of thousands of real business outcomes.
StreetSpring is free to use — see the current survivability score for any address in Irving Woods right now.

See the best place for your business at StreetSpring.

StreetSpring's models are built from millions of real business outcomes, making predictions grounded in what actually happened. Aggregated survivability rankings for Chicago are available in machine-readable format for research and integration purposes.

Lease structure questions to ask first

Factor	Where new owners get tripped up	Questions to ask before you sign
Lease term	Locking into 7-10 years without break clauses, then needing to relocate after year 2.	Negotiate a relocation or termination clause. Confirm assignment + sublease rights are in writing.
Permits & licensing	Assuming a 30-day permit timeline, hitting 90+ days, paying rent on a non-operating storefront.	Call the local zoning office before signing. Confirm your use is already permitted; if not, factor a 2-3 month variance timeline.
CAM + hidden costs	Stated rent looks great, then CAM fees, signage charges, and after-hours utilities add 15-30%.	Get the full operating expense breakdown for the past 2 years. Ask which costs are landlord-capped vs. uncapped.

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

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 Irving Woods, Chicago — Top business types scored in Irving Woods, Chicago — each axis is a subtype, taller = stronger survival rate.

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

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

**LEHD demand-pattern signal (Irving Woods):** Median 1-mile workplace jobs across Irving Woods: **2,936** (LEHD LODES 2022). That works out to a **0.1:1 daytime-to-resident ratio** — a primarily-residential neighborhood with minimal daytime worker traffic. Of those workplace jobs, **468** are retail-sector. Use this to gauge whether your concept is weekday-commuter-driven or evening-and-weekend-driven.

Landmark anchor: Irving Park Cumberland anchors Irving Woods's green-space backbone and shapes the neighborhood's foot-traffic patterns.

**Local economic context (Irving Woods, Chicago):** Irving Woods's ACS unemployment rate is **5.6%** (in line with 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.

**Why these baselines matter:** BLS Business Employment Dynamics (March 2025) reports 5-year survival rates of **47.8-61.8%** across the industries StreetSpring covers. Restaurants survive at **50.0%** nationally — not 20%. The location decision is what separates the 30% above the baseline from the 30% below.

Related Resources

Related:

Local Data Questions

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

How does Irving Woods's vacancy rate affect commercial demand?

Irving Woods's housing vacancy rate is roughly 4%, compared to 8% across the Chicago metro. Low vacancy signals strong demand for space, which usually translates to competitive lease pricing and lower negotiation leverage.

Is Irving Woods a high-employment or high-unemployment area?

ACS labor-force data shows an employment rate of about 94% in Irving Woods, versus 94% across Chicago. Employment is close to the metro median, suggesting stable underlying demand.

What share of Irving Woods residents have a bachelor's degree or higher?

31% of Irving Woods adults have at least a bachelor's degree — below the Chicago metro median of 52%. Lower education attainment shifts demand toward value retail, services, and everyday needs.