FILE -The last remaining Denny’s in San Francisco has shuttered after nearly 25 years. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
San Francisco
The last remaining Denny’s in the San Francisco area has closed.
After nearly 25 years in business, the 24-hour diner located near San Francisco’s Union Square closed Aug. 1, SFGate reported.
Franchise owner Chris Haque told the news outlet that ongoing vandalism contributed to their decision to close.
“We were the only store left, and we operated until the last day that we could,” Haque is quoted. “The cost of doing business is tremendous. There’s vandalism, and people come and eat and walk away, and there’s no one to stop them.”
Haque continued to say that the dine-and-dash issue just kept happening and cut into the restaurant’s profit margins.
The franchise owner will reportedly continue to run a Denny’s location in Tacoma, Washington. But the Union Square restaurant became the second Denny’s he has been forced to close.
Hague shared that he used to be the franchise owner of a Denny’s location in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf before it closed in 2019.
Empty storefronts have become more of a frequent scene in the downtown San Francisco area over the last few years.
Such retailers as Uniqlo, Nordstrom Rack and Anthropologie have closed.
And the owner of Westfield San Francisco Centre, a fixture for more than 20 years, said it was handing the mall back to its lender, citing declining sales and foot traffic, The Associated Press reported last year.
“I’d stand outside my bar at 10 p.m. and look, it would be like a party on the street,” Jack Mogannam, manager of Sam’s Cable Car Lounge, told The AP. “Now you see, like, six people on the street up and down the block. It’s a ghost town.”