Another supermarket is closing in San Francisco, this time leaving residents of the city’s Panhandle neighborhood searching for new places to buy their groceries. The Lucky Supermarket on Fulton Street will shutter its doors for good next month. Inside the store, many shelves are already sittin g empty as the community prepares for the loss of a convenient neighborhood staple. Customers carting and carrying out their groceries shared similar feelings of disappointment regarding the impending closure. “I feel so sorry that they’re going to close, it’s so convenient,” one shopper said. “Oh it’s so sad. I began to think, ‘how far do I need to go shop?'” another customer added. For residents in the immediate area, remaining grocery options are limited. San Francisco resident Joan Minninger said she will now have to rely on public transit and visit multiple locations to complete her shopping. “They don’t have all the things, they don’t like, paper towels and all that stuff. They have great food. And maybe I’ll have to go to Safeway and another block in,” Minninger said. Save Mart, the parent company of Lucky Supermarkets, released a statement explaining that the Fulton Street location had been underperforming, prompting the decision to close. According to a company spokesperson, Save Mart will continue paying rent and maintaining the site. The company hopes to sublease the building to another grocer but did not name any prospective operators. The company also stated it will make an effort to reassign workers from the Fulton Street store to other nearby locations, based on seniority. One customer speculated that the closure might be the result of younger shoppers increasingly relying on grocery delivery services rather than shopping in person. However, the shuttering of the Panhandle Lucky is the latest in a troubling string of supermarket closures across San Francisco. In February, a Safeway in the Fillmore neighborhood closed its doors, with the company citing persistent theft as a significant factor. Prior to that, another Lucky Supermarket in the Bayview neighborhood closed in November. Both the former Fillmore Safeway site—which has seen efforts to potentially develop mixed-use housing—and the Bayview Lucky site currently remain vacant. In response to the ongoing trend of grocery store closures, District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood had pushed a proposal titled the “Affordable Groceries Act.” The measure failed to secure support from Mayor Daniel Lurie and enough members of the Board of Supervisors, meaning it won’t appear on the ballot this November. “Residents really don’t see action coming from city hall on addressing these vacancies and preventing these stores from closures from happening before they do. And once they do happen, try to activate them as soon as possible,” Mahmood said. ...read more read less