David Pesusic and his family say keeping the doors open at their South Beach grocery store just isn’t worth it anymore.
Rampant shoplifting, break-ins, and difficulties with the homeless population have made Pesusic fear for his employees’ safety at Bayside Market, located at 120 Brannan St., just off the Embarcadero. Couple that with the rising costs of rent, labor, utilities, and insurance, as well as fewer customers since the pandemic, and there aren’t enough — or really any — reasons to stay, he said.
So, after 35 years in business, the market will close Sept. 13.
“I can’t prevent the homeless coming in, I can’t prevent shoplifters, I can’t control PG&E’s rates,” Pesusic told The Standard. “How do you justify staying?”
The market, one of the family’s two remaining stores in San Francisco, announced the closure Tuesday in a sternly worded letter posted to its doors. The letter blames City Hall, in part, for failing to take care of businesses and prioritizing the homelessness and drug crises over “law-abiding citizens.” The market is around the corner from the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, a temporary homeless shelter that opened in December 2019 and is, according to Pesusic, a main source of the store’s problems.
He claimed that the individuals housed at the shelter “think Bayside Market is a pantry for them,” and because the shelter regularly takes in new people, “that brings us more crime and more trouble into the store.”
“Every day, it’s like, what nut is going to walk in today?” Pesusic said. “It’s sad. It’s everyone in San Francisco dealing with this.”
When asked for comment on the letter and Pesusic’s claims about the shelter, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said the center’s 2022 lease extension was “spearheaded” by the community and pointed to data showing a decline in crime in the area. According to an August report from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the number of police incidents in the zone around the center, which includes Bayside Market, has decreased from more than 100 most months in 2019 to 80 or fewer each month so far this year.
But Pesusic says the city’s data don’t tell the whole story.
“Half the stuff doesn’t get reported,” he said, adding that the market doesn’t even call police after some incidents, because officers either don’t show up or don’t do anything.
Pesusic said the store had three break-ins in the last three years, and it took 12 or 15 hours for officers to arrive. Employees have been threatened and spit on, and some customers are too scared to shop at the market, he said. On a recent day, a man who appeared to be homeless entered the market and started whipping a belt at employees, so they called 911, but police never showed up.
“We call for help. There is no help. You’ve got to defend yourself,” Pesusic said. “City Hall doesn’t care.”
The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
With the store’s lease coming up for renewal and a PG&E bill (viewed by The Standard) that shot up by $3,000 between June and August, the financial strain of continuing to operate the market has become too much to bear. “What do I do, turn off the freezer?” Pesusic said.
But the main reason the family, which opened its first of six San Francisco stores in 1978, decided to close Bayside Market is that they just can’t keep their employees safe.
“The only reason that we’ve lasted as long as we’ve lasted — it’s gonna make me cry — is our dedicated employees, you know, them having our backs and watching out over what’s going on inside of the store,” Pesusic said.
In the days since the closure notice was posted on the door, customers have praised the owners for telling it like it is — even as they mourn the loss of the neighborhood market.
“Everyone has complimented us and said, ‘Well said,’” Pesusic noted. “We stated no lies. Life is more important than a dollar, and the city doesn’t get that.”