A Whole Foods Market in San Francisco's Mid-Market neighborhood will be closing temporarily due to safety concerns.
The location at 8th and Market streets will keep its doors closed beginning Tuesday. It's not known when the store will reopen.
"To ensure the safety of our Team Members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being," a Whole Foods Market spokesperson said in a statement. "All Team Members will be transferred to one of our nearby locations."
Supervisor Matt Dorsey said he was "incredibly disappointed but sadly unsurprised" by the closure.
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"It's the only supermarket I'm aware of in the city where the only basket you can get is a pushcart simply because they were just used for shoplifting," said Dorsey.
Shoppers said they've witnessed constant shoplifting.
"It sucks because I came here every day ... this is something we all needed, we sorely needed a grocery store and now it's closed down," said shopper Sedric Karneh.
Shopper Brian Deangelis said the store also stopped selling hard liquor because it was being stolen in large quantities and drug use in the bathrooms was also a problem,
"Due to drug use you had to show a receipt before using the bathroom. So that was a thing. So there were steps along the way to try to improve the situation," he said.
In response to the closure, Dorsey announced plans for a charter amendment he's hoping to put forward to voters in 2024, aiming to build up San Francisco's understaffed police force over the next five years.
"We have to get back to a fully-staffed police department and I would argue that if we're going to have businesses like Whole Foods closing after a year, we can't afford not to solve this problem," said Dorsey.
Mayor London Breed's office issued the following statement:
Public safety is Mayor Breed’s top priority and vital to the City’s work around restoring our economy and making our residents and workers feel safe. Over the last several months, the San Francisco Police Department and the Mayor’s Office have been working collaboratively with Whole Foods’ leadership to address public safety issues at their 8th and Market location. We will continue to engage with them about the future use of the site. The Police will continue aggressively enforcing against open-air drug dealing, maximizing police response to urgent calls for assistance, partnering with retailers to address theft in their stores, and enforcing new street vending regulations to disrupt the sale of stolen goods.
San Francisco is addressing public safety concerns on multiple fronts – we recently passed an emergency $25 million dollar budget funding supplemental to keep officers on our streets using overtime and we also extended our community ambassador program. In the long-term, we need to continue ramping up our recruitment and retention efforts to ensure we have the police staffing necessary to have more officers in our neighborhoods.
