Whole Foods, the Amazon-owned grocery store, has closed its flagship San Francisco store just over a year after it opened, Business Insider reports.
The grocery chain’s nearly 65,000-square-foot store, which closed on Monday, is located at Trinity Place in the city’s Mid-Market neighborhood.
The closure was due to concerns about crime and drug use in the area surrounding the store, which is located in the Tenderloin district.
“To ensure the safety of our Team Members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being,” a company spokesperson said.
All team members will be transferred to nearby locations.
The company has not ruled out the possibility of reopening the store if it can ensure the safety of its employees.
Conservative firebrand Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) took the opportunity to slam California’s mishandling of The Golden City.
“Due to employee safety concerns, Whole Foods is shutting down their flagship store in San Francisco,” Rep. Boebert tweeted. “The writing has been on the walls since the city had an app to track and report human feces on the sidewalks.”
“And, yet, Democrats still insist that California is their shining example of how to run a state,” she added.
This is not the first time that retailers have closed their stores in San Francisco due to concerns about crime.
In 2021, Walgreens closed five stores amid concerns about shoplifting.
Whole Foods has been closing multiple stores around the U.S. over the past year, but CEO Jason Buechel has said that the chain wants to pick up the pace of new store openings in the coming years, Insider notes.
The company opened 11 new locations in 2022, including stores in Culver City, California, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Property crimes in San Francisco saw a 23% increase between 2020 and 2022, with spikes in burglary and theft headlining the surge, San Francisco Police Department data show.
Meanwhile, violent crime statistics reveal 12 homicides in the city this year, representing an increase of 20% compared to the same period the previous year.
There were 56 homicides in San Francisco in 2022.
Notably, Bob Lee, founder of Cash App and the former chief technology officer of Square, was stabbed to death last week near downtown San Francisco.
The opioid epidemic in San Francisco began in the 1990s and has worsened in recent years with the emergence of fentanyl, Newsweek reports.
A San Francisco Medical Examiner’s report indicates there were 650 drug overdose deaths in the city in 2021.
