UNDISCOVERED SF

San Francisco Filipino Creative market

The Client

As the co-founders and Event Producer of this event, in partnership with nonprofit Kultivate Labs, UNDISCOVERED SF has definitely been our most challenging, and most rewarding event to date! As part of a larger pronged strategy to build a thriving commercial corridor for the city/state recognized SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural District, we partnered with Kultivate Labs to concept this large-scale festival to jumpstart economic activity in the district and create a space for Filipino entrepreneurs, creatives, and artists to showcase their work and build their audience.

Goals & Challenges

2023 will be our 7th year of the event! Over the past 6 years we’ve come across multiple challenges year over year.

Every year, a new venue. Since there is no venue in the cultural district large enough to host the 6000+ people that attend this outdoor festival, every year we’re tasked with taking over an empty parking lot or empty space and activating it, while also closing down multiple streets to make it happen.
Producing a large-scale festival – MONTHLY – for the first few years. July – December, every 3rd Saturday we rinse/repeat this festival for thousands of attendees and 70+ vendors.
Navigating the complexities of street closure permits, neighborhood outreach, and the SF event permitting system.
Finding Filipino businesses! At the beginning in 2017, we knew only a handful of Filipino owned businesses. We realized that many Fil-Am businesses existed, but most of them weren’t necessarily “claiming Filipino” for various reasons.

Designing a Filipino American Theme Park in San Francisco

Generated over $1m in economic activity

We’ve hosted 27 UNDISCOVERED SF festivals to date and have helped generate over $1M in economic activity for the cultural district and our small business vendors & creatives!

growing list of filipino business owners

As the years went on and we produced more and more events, we saw businesses slowly starting to claim Filipino more, and we then developed a large list of Filipino owned businesses, with that list continuing to grow.

6 Different Venues

In 2022, we hosted our largest event venue ever with 6 different venues & 3 streets closed off, and over 6,000+ attendees.

filipino artists

We’ve booked big name Filipino American artists over the years including rapper Ruby Ibarra, the Queen of freestyle, Jocelyn Enriquez, One Vo1ce, Rocky Rivera, Beatrock Music, Lyrics Born, DJ SOSUPERSAM, DJ Umami, Adrian Marcel, DJ D-Sharp, and of course so many emerging artists and “undiscovered” talent.

Small Business wins

2022 was our HIGHEST GROSSING EVENT ever with over $130K in sales to our small business vendors!

Vendor Team

“My move to San Francisco (BX ALL DAY!) was definitely influenced by what I’d experienced at UNDSCVRD in the past—it’s a super inspiring event and I’m beyond thrilled to be participating in it this year. It’s all about the community, good food, and the people and I live for that, . . .”

“Having an opportunity to participate this year is an honor and I was humbled by the invitation. We want to showcase what Filipino food looks like in the eyes of a Filipino-American, how we interpret that and what we feel our food could look and taste like in the future. “