For the last 11 years, Littlejohn's Candies has been one of the locally-owned businesses working to try to revitalize San Francisco's Mid-Market corridor, but the owners now say, despite their best efforts, it's time to close the location.
The final day of business for the small candy shop will be Thursday, July 20. The owners say their plan is to open a different site, but they haven't found that site yet and don't know when they will open it.
Co-owner Christopher Graves did say he and his co-owner recently bought a kitchen space in Amador County. They plan to use that to continue making candy and servicing their online customers.
Graves saw plenty of growth in the first several years after opening, but then business leveled off.
"Somewhere around 2017, 2018 that peaked," he said. "I think that a lot of people want to, especially people in the city, the officials want to rope what's going on in that neighborhood into the whole COVID, people not going back into work, blah, blah, blah. The neighborhood was already kind of headed in the wrong direction before all of it."
The shop then started seeing foot traffic drop when Uber moved its headquarters from across the street to the Chase Center. The pandemic also cleared out other nearby office workers. Then Twitter laid off thousands, further decimating the customer base.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed agreed the changes in the neighborhood have been challenging, but she said when Littlejohn's does decide to reopen, the owners could be eligible for some of the $4 million in grants she just announced, all aimed at helping small business.
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"It's really to grow local businesses like this one to ensure that they have an opportunity to continue their business in San Francisco," she said.
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