Year after year, cities across America continue to surprise us with new, innovative, and downright awesome businesses.
This year we've already brought you the coolest new businesses in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco, and now we've gone nationwide, finding the hottest restaurants, boutiques, startups, and everything in between across the U.S.
There's a corner store with a bike-through window, a mobile shop that sells vintage clothing from a 1960s trailer, America's first pizza museum, and a Chinese restaurant that serves dumplings that look like Pac-Man characters.
Some of the businesses are based in brick and mortar stores, while others—like food trucks and mobile shops—sell their wares on wheels. We've also included several online-only businesses.
From San Francisco to New York (and everywhere in between), we've found the coolest new businesses in America that opened or expanded within the last year and a half. Email MNisen@businessinsider.com if we left off your favorite.
Baco Mercat
408 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, Calif.
What it is: An inventive new restaurant from former Lazy Ox chef Josef Centeno.
Why it's cool: The restaurant is named for, but is definitely not limited to, one of the chef's wildly popular and signature creations, the baco, described as a "hybrid taco-gyro thing" with fillings like pork belly, beef carnitas, and oxtail hash. Other dishes include Caesar-style Brussels sprouts, sauteed peaches, and coffee-charred rib eye.
Bacon Bacon
205 Frederick St., San Francisco, Calif.
What it is: Bacon-centric food truck.
Why it's cool: Bacon Bacon comes in the form of a food truck and a brick-and-mortar restaurant. And both serve, yep—you guessed it—all things bacon.
The Bacon Bacon Truck rolls around San Francisco distributing six bacon-friendly sandwiches, including a pork meatball banh mi and grilled cheese, as well as french fries and root beer. Bacon Bacon also sells a bacon bouquet and chocolate-covered bacon.
Bearded Bastard
Based in Austin, Tex., found on Etsy
What it is: A new brand of mustache wax.
Why it's cool: The man known as Jeremiah Newton, who also sports an impressive face full of hair, started Bearded Bastard to help soften the burliest of beards and tame the unruliest of mustaches. Products so far include the Woodsman mustache wax and Woodsman beard oil, but the new Austin-based company is developing many new man-inspired oils and tonics, which will be available soon.
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