Walgreens Announces 12 Stores In San Francisco To Close By February

Pharmacy and retail chain Walgreens announced Thursday that they will close 12 stores within the city of San Francisco, with the closures expected to occur by the end of February.

Since 2019, Walgreens and the Bay Area have been constantly at odds, with the retail pharmacy chain closing  17 stores in total between 2019 and early 2021. While reasons varied from economic to performance issues, employees at the locations had said that high crime and shoplifting were the major reasons. When an additional 5 closed in October 2021, Walgreens finally admitted that the closures were due to ongoing retail crime. However, San Francisco officials, including former Mayor London Breed continued to deny the closures were because of crime despite Walgreens specifically saying that that was the case.

In 2023, Walgreens faced another few negative high profile incidents in the area. That March, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state would no longer do business with Walgreens following the company decision not to sell the abortion pill in 20 states after attorney generals from those states threatened legal action. Newsom even began ending state contracts until the next month when the state Department of Health Care Services found that Newsom’s actions violated federal law. The policies were reversed, but left a negative stain between the state and the company.

The same month, the shooting of a criminal shoplifter by a security guard at a San Francisco Walgreens made national headlines. Protests against the company in the Bay Area as a result of that only further strained the relationship between the Bay Area and the retailer. California and San Francisco even sided with Walgreens earlier this year in not charging the security guard with any crime, but even that gesture didn’t completely mend things. Only last month, the retailer closed two stores in Oakland and one in Richmond as a result of economic issues, increasing the overall number of Walgreens’ closed in the Bay area since 2019 to over two dozen.

This led to Thursday, when Walgreens sent a further 12 stores, all within the city of San Francisco, to the chopping block. The company cited economic issues, including high costs, rent prices, and the high salary demands of the area. While crime and shoplifting were not named as reasons by the company, many of the locations had been flooded with shoplifting incidents in recent years. This includes the Market Street location, infamous for being the store where the Banko Brown shooting took place in 2023, the Geary Boulevard location, which had the highest theft rate of any Walgreens in the nation in 2023, and the Potrero Avenue location, which had recently seen a gang of 12 steal $84,000 worth of merchandise from the store.

More Walgreens closures in SF

“Our retail pharmacy business is central to our go-forward business strategy,” said spokesman Marty Maloney on Thursday. “However, increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures are weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs. It is never an easy decision to close a store. We know that our stores are important to the communities that we serve, and therefore do everything possible to improve the store performance. When closures are necessary, like those in San Francisco, we will work in partnership with community stakeholders to minimize customer disruptions.”

Following the closures, Walgreens is now expected to only have 29 locations within San Francisco by March. And with 25% of Walgreens’ 8,600 stores set to close soon in the U.S., more closures around the Bay Area this year are likely.

“Walgreens is having a tough time everywhere right now,” Pearl Fawcett, a retail store analyst, told the Globe on Friday. “Costs are really climbing for them, and they’re looking at ways to right the ship right now. San Francisco has some of the highest rents in the country, some of the highest wages, and has stores that see the most merchandise loss through thefts. Add it all together, and it makes sense for these locations to close. If the location is losing money, then why keep it open while your company is hemorrhaging cash?

“The San Francisco stores have the same deals from previous closures. All prescriptions are being used, they’re keeping as many employees as possible, and all that. But honestly, these closures were very much expected, and many of the employees knew that their store didn’t have long. Low sales and high shoplifting. It was pretty obvious. That said, things like high rent, drug reimbursement rates going down, and online shopping have all certainly been part of it too.

“And sadly, as you said, these are not going to be the last ones. San Francisco just got a new Mayor [Daniel Lurie], and he probably was not happy with getting bad news like this so soon, that’s for sure.”

The 12 stores in San Francisco are currently set to be closed between February 24th and February 27th.