The longtime McDonald's location at San Francisco's Stonestown Galleria has closed after 30 years.
For regular customers at the McDonald’s location, they told NBC Bay Area Monday that seeing the popular restaurant closed was the last thing they expected. The restaurant officially closed on Sunday.
"This is a spot that everybody goes to. Everyone. Everytime I come it's always, not just the kids, but everybody comes for the coffee, just to sit down and talk,” said Shelly Eskridge, a regular customer.
Instead of placing their orders for Big Macs, Fries or Chicken McNuggets on Monday, would be customers watched as a crew with a crane took the McDonald’s "M" off the wall and restaurant equipment was walked out the door.
In a statement posted on the door over the weekend, the franchise owner, Scott Rodrick wrote that employees of the restaurant were given the option to transfer to one of the other McDonald’s he still operates.
Rodrick owns more than a dozen McDonald’s across Northern California. NBC Bay Area was not able to reach him on Monday to talk about the closure. But he has been very vocal about the rising price of doing business in California.
In an interview with CNBC last month, Rodrick described the challenges.
"It's not wage, we're talking about massive insurance costs that have gone up in the state of California, if you can get it," he said. "Government regulations that sometimes choke the lifeblood and oxygen out of small business entrepreneurship. Obviously, back door costs have skyrocketed, milk, eggs, the cost of beef, chicken."
In published reports about this closure Rodrick has also said the leasing costs at Stonestown were also part of his decision to shut it down.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. >Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
A spokesperson at Stonestown released the following statement on Monday:
"We did try to negotiate with the tenant to the best of our abilities. We're looking forward to repurposing the space."
The lease for the McDonald’s expires at the end of this month.
