Whole Foods Closes San Francisco Flagship Store Over Employee Safety Concerns
One of the City Supervisors is using this event to get a measure on the ballot re-establishing minimum police staffing levels.
San Francisco’s decline had already transitioned from a gradual to a sudden phase.
That descent is now accelerating.
Whole Foods is closing their flagship San Francisco store on Monday at the end of business hours.
Whole Foods told KTVU that the store on Market Street at 8th is shutting down for the time being because of employee safety concerns. A city supervisor calls the closure temporary.
“To ensure the safety of our Team Members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being,” a spokesperson for Whole Foods wrote in a statement.
No details on the exact nature of the safety concerns were offered. But one might be able to take a reasonable guess.
A City Hall source told The Standard the company cited deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for its closure.
Since the start of the pandemic, Downtown has suffered a massive loss in foot traffic due to remote work. Many small businesses have shuttered, while examples of extreme poverty and mental illness on the street have become more apparent.
Fears of a “doom loop” in which a cascade of negative financial impacts compound have spread across the city, and City Hall officials currently expect a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco’s budget.
One of the City Supervisors is using this event to get a measure on the ballot re-establishing minimum police staffing levels.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who lives in the neighborhood and frequented the store, said he’d seen signs that the Whole Foods was struggling. As a near-daily customer, he said, the store had gotten rid of handheld shopping baskets, allowing only carts. An employee told Dorsey that all 250 baskets the store had when it first opened were stolen — something Dorsey said he saw evidence of during neighborhood cleanups on nearby Natoma and Minna streets. Staff also reportedly complained about “people acting out” inside the store, he said.
“It’s obvious to me that, as an employer, Whole Foods has a lot of concerns about the safety of their employees, and ultimately that’s why they made the decision to close,” Dorsey said. “I wish they hadn’t, but I’ve also been in there and seen some things that are off-putting.”
Dorsey seized on the store closure to announce Monday that he wants voters to decide on a ballot measure next year that would re-establish minimum staffing levels for the San Francisco Police Department and set a goal of reaching it in the next five years. Dorsey, a former SFPD spokesman, said he had asked City Attorney David Chiu in late March for help in drafting the language of the potential measure, which could appear on the ballot in March 2024.
Today, I’m waiving privilege to publicly announce a drafting request I’m working on with @Stefani4CA for a Charter Amendment entitled the “San Francisco Police Department Full Staffing Act,” which will get San Francisco to a fully staffed police department within 5 years. (3/7)
— Matt Dorsey (@mattdorsey) April 10, 2023
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Comments
I spent a lovely month my senior of college (’99) in San Francisco interning in the history museum at Wells Fargo. I took the trolley to work every morning, and enjoyed the sights. I wanted to take my family to experience the magic of San Francisco, but by they time the kids were old enough to enjoy it, it had, sadly, become a city I would never visit.
I have a friend from childhood – my best friend of those years – who lives there, and according to her dad I talked to a few months ago, she has no intention of ever leaving. A bit later he mentioned that she is a flaming liberal; I was unsurprised seeing as he said she would never leave.
“she is a flaming liberal”
The history of that term is interesting. Prior to the Joe McCarthy era the expression was ‘flaming red liberal’. I guess out of courtesy and reaction to the times, the ‘red’ was dropped. What a pity.
Flaming liberal? Ask her what she is liberal about? More likely; she’s a flaming Marxist or fascist.
She’s liberal with other persons’ money, property, and lives.
The people that run SF and the people who insist on voting for them are beyond saving. For example, if these people were drowning in rough water and a Republican threw them a life ring….these lost people would refuse to take hold of it to save themselves. They would righteously claim they simply could not see the life ring.
reminds me of the dwarves in the barn in the Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. I just reread that with my kids, and I am SHOCKED at how much he got right.
The movie, Erik the Viking, actually has this scene.
The people of SF will no longer be able to steal healthy food.
It’s a food desert! I blame Trump
/s
Which at least gives us warning that we should not bother to try to save them if they do call for help.
Subotai Bahadur
They won’t call you.
They’ll call Brandon, and he’ll give them your money.
The only way for the city to fix this is to double the reparations payments they’ve already promised.
Gov Hairdo has been running around sending up trial balloons telling the world how much better his dying state is than Fl. This would contradict his gaslighting.
The Trinity store? Oh yes, that city’s Holy Trinity- The Tranny, The Aborted Fetus, and the Fentanyl Dealer. Satan Damn.
I thought Governor Hairstyle would destroy California with his wasteful spending like the fast train to nowhere, and his not spending on dams and other crumbling infrastructure.
To my surprise he found a way to ruin even faster by letting criminals run free. One has to ask, what would the progressives do different if they were deliberately trying to destroy the state, or country?
Not a damn thing, not a one
Just like Sodom and Gomorrah, Leftism is beyond saving. Any attempt to save Leftist run cities from their own despair and destruction will only lead to the savior being destroyed. Any who have sympathy for the fallout due to Leftism and its cities are also doomed to rot.
When we see this destruction and know there is nothing to be done, then an old school military acronym comes in handy: fido.
My thought was SNAFU and BOHICA.
And, my thoughts on San Francisco” DILLIGAFF.
A good one!
Guess what noontime shoplifters, now that the food store is closed, TANSTAAFL
We need more folks like Cas Walker.
https://youtu.be/MBubbz6rfcU
I doubt that increasing the amount of police will amount to much when they are not supported by the legislators.
We need a second war on drugs.
Do you think that anyone who would be a good cop would think of trying to hire on in Frisco?
Subotai Bahadur
That would make the current one a two-front war on the same front. Not sure even Stalin could win that.
It doesn’t matter how many police they have when a Soros-backed or other Regressive DA will release every shoplifter they bring in. Get a policy of prosecutions and seeking the maximum sentence, and if the police aren’t catching them, the stores will stores can hire private security and do without police.
Elected officials on the city council, the mayor, and the District Attorney are responsible for creating these conditions through policies that are lenient on crime if not actively promoting it. Then, when the predictable happens, they’ll chase down news cameras, emote all over the place about food deserts, and lamenting already under served neighborhoods losing supermarkets and drug stores.
I don’t know if they can’t recognize that their policies are causing it, don’t want to admit that their policies are causing it, or if they are doing this intentionally, knowing what the real-world consequences of their policies are going to be.
I am surprised that one of the Whole Foods’ reasons for closing is to prevent harm to customers!
AS CORRECTED
I am surprised that one of the Whole Foods’ reasons for closing WASN’T to prevent harm to customers!
They’re already down to only the customers who harm others.
Real good job those communists do of running things, isn’t it?
Where are they going to find a pool of candidates to be police officers in the Bay area. No one with conservative leanings would be welcomed, a centrist could easily find better environments to train and work, I can’t see the far left holding the discipline needed to be an officer of the law, enforce they law in that environment. The younger leftists are as anti police as any group in history, can’t se them changing sides.
I don’t think they can throw enough cash and benefits to fill the roster holes filled by retirements, resignations in exchange to work in that abyss.
“I can’t see the far left holding the discipline needed to be an officer of the law”
As long as the uniform covers their gang tats, they’re in the catbird seat.
Sounds like a joke, but in LA, the problem has progressed from gang members becoming cops to further gang goals, to cops forming their own gangs within the department to prey on citizens.
Are those loony leftists still planning on handing out $500 grand per head on reparations?
Of course not, that’s absurd.
The figure is up to $5M now. No /sarc.
what a shame–well, at least they won’t have to try and market Pudweiser
“when you say Pud…..you’ve said it all”
“Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who lives in the neighborhood and frequented the store”
Yup, pooh-pooh everybody else’s wolf problem until one kills your pony.
We now live in a world where practically all governments are run by cretins.
Nice catch. Play this record loud.
Problem with hiring more police is arresting criminals is meaningless without prosecutors to prosecute them and prisons (and prison guards) to incarcerate them. Society doesn’t have the will to provide either so shit is gonna have to hit the fan.
Pointless. Sad. A splendidly futile gesture.
I look forward to the scores of Amazon-droid protests and screechy discussion list meltdowns over their companion operation creating another food desert.
What’s that? They’re a whole lot quieter after the across the board layoffs. Odd, that.
Did you spot the picture of Biden behind Dorsey during the interview? Not a current picture, but an older picture of Biden as a Senator. This is San Fran so a picture of a dem is expected. It’s taken this long to have reality smack him in the face and I bet it would never occur to him that he might have had something to do with it.
Why is someone from City Hall weighing in on this in the first place. The city doesn’t run private businesses
Now, they’ll be complaining that the area is becoming a looting desert