Downtown Downey New Restaurants: What's Open and What's Ahead

Shake Shack opened this year at 8300 Firestone Boulevard without asking the city to touch a single traffic signal. In-N-Out's second location, a short drive away on Imperial Highway, cannot open until the city gets an extended deceleration lane, a new right-turn lane on Bellflower Boulevard, and updated signal striping. Both are burger chains. Both are opening in Downey this cycle. The gap between what each one had to build says less about hamburgers than about how much traffic Firestone Boulevard is already carrying.

The quiet one: 8300 Firestone Boulevard

The Downey Patriot reported that the Downey Planning Commission approved Shake Shack's Downtown Downey location back in March 2023, on a lot that used to hold Legends Board Shop. The plan called for demolishing the existing building and putting up a 3,624-square-foot restaurant with a 933-square-foot patio, a drive-thru, and parking at the rear of the property along Downey Avenue. Planning Commissioner Mario Guerra, who voted to approve it, tied the project directly to the city's broader downtown push at the time. The Downey Patriot reported that Guerra described it as part of the Downtown Specific Plan's Downtown Downey District and an example of "businesses working together with the city to re-energize our community."

It took longer than a lot of downtown watchers expected. Nearly a year after that approval, a Talking Downey podcast episode had Councilman Horacio Ortiz saying demolition would finally start that February. Whatever the delay, the location at 8300 Firestone is up and running now. It shows a full slate of hours, Sunday through Thursday 10 a.m. to midnight and Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., and it's already the subject of active reviews. It became the chain's first location in Southeast Los Angeles County, and no city inspection or off-site road work stood between approval and opening.

The original In-N-Out at Firestone and Lakewood

The original In-N-Out is four miles south, at 8767 Firestone Boulevard, at the intersection of Firestone and Lakewood. The Planning Commission discussed traffic at that location during the hearing for the new site.

The Downey Patriot quoted Commissioner Gil Legaspi:

"God knows we need a second location. The Firestone location, the traffic, it could use some help."

That's not a comment about the food. It's a comment about queue length spilling into an intersection that a lot of Downey residents cross on the way to somewhere else; the remarks identify a traffic concern, but don't establish that it caused the decision to add a second location. The second location is planned for Imperial and Bellflower.

What getting approved actually required

The Downey Patriot reported that the new restaurant is going up at 9440-9454 Imperial Highway, on the southwest corner of Imperial Highway and Bellflower Boulevard, replacing a long-vacant commercial building and an adjoining underused lot that commissioners described as an eyesore. The building itself will run 3,887 square feet, with indoor seating for 84 people and an outdoor patio for another 28. It comes with 74 parking spaces, more than the city requires.

The part that separates this project from a routine restaurant permit is the drive-thru. It's designed as a dual-lane system that merges into a single pickup lane, built to hold up to 32 vehicles at once. City traffic engineers reviewed the layout and concluded it exceeds Downey's own standards for on-site stacking. That was the easy part. As a condition of approval, In-N-Out also has to fund an extended right-turn deceleration lane on Imperial Highway, a new dedicated right-turn lane on Bellflower Boulevard, and updated striping and signal adjustments at the intersection, all before the restaurant can open.

The Planning Commission approved the project in December 2025. Construction is expected to run nine to twelve months, and the project is projected to create about 50 jobs. Commission chair Mario Guerra, the same commissioner who championed the Shake Shack site three years earlier, welcomed this one too, framing In-N-Out as revitalizing a corner that had languished for decades.

What filled in while the chains waited

The chains weren't the only thing changing on Downey's dining map this year. DIOSA Downey opened as a Mexican restaurant built around a temple-style interior, with a pitch built into its own description: "the only local spot that makes every occasion feel special with champagne and ice cream for birthdays." No Toro Cafe opened this year with a military-themed dining room and has already been named a local favorite in a 2026 dining guide. Zankou Chicken landed in Downey too, adding a casual, family-oriented option to a city that already had plenty of them.

None of that depended on a Planning Commission hearing about turn lanes. Independent operators moved into Downey on their own schedule, ahead of both burger chains, which suggests the corridor's foot traffic was already there before either drive-thru broke ground. The chains are following demand that Downey's own restaurant owners had already tested.

What this means if you're driving Firestone this fall

If your routine runs through Downtown Downey, Shake Shack at 8300 Firestone is already taking orders, no waiting required. If your routine runs through Firestone and Lakewood, the wait there hasn't changed, and it won't until the second In-N-Out clears its full construction timeline. Given a December 2025 approval and a nine-to-twelve-month build, that corner on Imperial and Bellflower is still going to be a construction site well into next year.

The familiar line at Firestone and Lakewood is the only option in Downey for a while yet.

Corners like this one, sitting vacant for years and then requiring turn lanes and signal work to support new development, tend to shift what's happening on the residential blocks around them too. If you're curious what a filled-in commercial corridor like Imperial and Bellflower might mean for your own street in Downey, Celeste Castillo tracks these changes block by block and is glad to walk through what it looks like for your specific address.