Rampant Bay Area Restaurant Shut Downs: Now it’s Oakland In N-Out Closing

In N-Out Burger announced on Monday that the last remaining franchise location in Oakland is now set to close because of heightened crime , becoming a landmark closure as the number of restaurant closures continues to grow in the Bay Area.

For the last several years, restaurants have closed at a faster and faster rate in San Francisco, Oakland, and other Bay Area cities. Crime, low customer traffic, higher costs, growing city restrictions, and other factors have helped contribute to closures of everything from long-time iconic restaurants, new fledgling restaurants, and ubiquitous fast food locations. The closure of restaurants has also been tied closely to the continued mass layoffs and high office vacancy crises in the area, as it results in fewer customers for restaurants and exasperates the crime rate.

In recent weeks, the growing number of fast food restaurants either closing, raising prices, or cutting on back severely because of the upcoming $20 an hour fast food minimum wage has threatened even more closures. Virtually every chain, from Pizza Hut to McDonalds, have had some sort of action taken. An outlier has been the Southern California based In-N Out. Despite the upcoming changes, the chain had already enacted them prior. As a result, the chain announced further expansion last week, with more expected soon.

However, while the chain has been one of the few exceptions to fare the $20 an hour raise gracefully, crime in the Bay Area proved to be something, like many other restaurants, that they just couldn’t overcome. On Monday, the famed fast food chain announced that the lone remaining In N-Out in Oakland is to close because of crime and the chains concern about employee safety.

“We have made the decision to close our In-N-Out Burger location in Oakland, California, because of ongoing issues with crime. We are grateful for the local community, which has supported us for over 18 years, and we recognize that this closure negatively impacts our Associates and their families,” said Chief Operating Officer Danny Warwick in a statement. “Additionally, this location remains a busy and profitable one for the company, but our top priority must be the safety and wellbeing of our Customers and Associates – we cannot ask them to visit or work in an unsafe environment. Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our Customers and Associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft, and armed robberies.”

Experts told the Globe on Monday that, with crime still high in the San Francisco area, more closures could come soon.

“In N-Out is a strong, strong company,” explained Elliot Barnes, a fast food restaurant consultant, to the Globe on Monday. “They take careful expansion and don’t close locations unless they absolutely have to. They have a unique distribution system, and removing locations could break that flow somewhat. So Oakland closing, it’s not normal. It had to be an outside factor, like crime, because these places are always popular. If you ever drove by one at lunch or dinner time, you experienced the traffic from the drive-through line spilling out into the street. Even rural locations have that. Oakland had to have had a really bad crime problem. And if this crime is high everywhere there, then we may see some more quite possibly. It’s speculatory, but no one thought Oakland would go either.”

More closures at Bay area restaurants are expected to be announced soon.