Whole Foods in San Francisco Closes Due to Crime, Drugs

A Whole Foods store that opened a year ago in downtown San Francisco is closing, reportedly because of rampant crime.

“We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being,” the company said in a statement Monday to the San Francisco Standard. “If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening” of the location at 8th and Market streets.

The Standard, citing an unnamed City Hall source, said Whole Foods had cited drug use and crime near the store as reasons for the closure.

Opened in March 2022, the Whole Foods was one of the biggest in the city’s downtown, selling 3,700 local products and designed with “nods to classic San Francisco,” a news release stated.

The store had already cut its hours in October, due to “high theft” and hostile visitors, the Standard reported. The next month the store enforced restroom rules after syringes and pipes were found.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey tweeted he was “incredibly disappointed” by the closure.

“Our neighborhood waited a long time for this supermarket, but we’re also well aware of problems they’ve experienced with drug-related retail theft, adjacent drug markets, and the many safety issues related to them,” he wrote.

Property crimes in San Francisco made headlines after videos of thieves in action surfaced. The city had a 23% increase in property crimes between 2020 and 2022, with spikes in burglary and theft headlining the surge, according to San Francisco police. 

Cotopaxi, another store in San Francisco, temporarily closed in October, citing theft and employee safety, but reopened the next month, CNN reported.

Cotopaxi CEO Davis Smith, in a Linkedin post, said “large-scale theft and raiding” put the store’s employees at risk, but lamented that the issue had been politicized.

“We had many jumping to our support, some who felt offended by my post, and a few who politicized our store’s closure (because these are the times we live in, unfortunately),” Smith wrote. “To be clear, I never anticipated that our decision to close our Hayes Valley store would become entangled in political discourse.”