A Whole Foods spokesperson told The Standard that the Trinity location, as it is called, will be closed "for the time being" while the company assesses whether or not there is anything that can be done to make the downtown San Francisco location safe and profitable.
"If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location," the spokesperson said.
According to a source at City Hall, Whole Foods was particularly disturbed by deteriorating street conditions around the store, including rampant drug use and other criminal activity taking place right outside its doors – and sometimes even inside the store.
(Related: San Francisco is the poop capital of the world – human feces can be found smeared all over the city's sidewalks.)
Whole Foods is just one of many companies that has fled downtown San Francisco, which is collapsing at breakneck speed, especially since the start of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) "pandemic."
Normal foot traffic is down bigtime while vagrancy and criminal activity have taken its place. Many businesses both big and small have closed, leaving behind streets full of homelessness, drug addiction, and poop everywhere.
City Hall officials expect a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco's budget due to all these business closures, which are contributing to a "doom loop" that will imperil the city's finances for years to come.
When it was still in operation, the Whole Foods Trinity location had to slash its operating hours drastically from what they started at due to "high theft" and an inordinately high number of "hostile visitors."
The store also had to enforce new bathroom rules after employees found syringes and pipes used for drugs on the floor and in the trash cans.
After it was first opened in March 2022, Whole Foods called the Trinity location its "flagship store" for the area. The 64,737-square-foot space now sits abandoned while a reevaluation ensues.
"They just barely opened up," complained Allyn Mejia, an organizer at the nearby Housing Rights Committee who used to drop in for lunch and groceries at the Trinity location. "I hope they open again."
Mejia says she is not all that surprised about these developments, seeing as how she regularly witnessed incidents involving crime in and around the store.
"I've seen security run into the store real [sic] quick before, like, something happened," she said.
In the days leading up to the store's sudden and unexpected closure, employees could still be seen stocking shelves full of food. Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district includes the Whole Foods Trinity location, commented on Twitter that he is "incredibly disappointed but sadly unsurprised" by the store's closure.
As you may recall, San Francisco lost much of its police presence following the George Floyd psy-op. Dorsey hopes to change that by introducing new legislation with Supervisor Catherine Stefani that would amend the City Charter to get the local police department fully staffed within the next five years.
Since 2017, San Francisco's police department has lost 335 officers. It's current staffing level of 1,537 officers falls well short of its goal of having 2,100 officers on the force.
The collapse of America is well underway. To learn more, visit Collapse.news.
Sources for this article include: