A distraught San Francisco entrepreneur has said his restaurants have been robbed, vandalized and targeted for extortion as the city continues to grapple with a crime and drug crisis.
Hanson Li, whose Salt Partners group manages several prominent restaurants in the country, said three of his businesses have been targeted in recent weeks.
Lazy Susan, a Chinese eatery, was burgled on Monday, just days after its storefront was damaged — and weeks after another of the group’s bar was vandalized.
“I was very excited (on Monday). It’s like death by a thousand cuts. All of these seemingly minor things will not only have an actual impact on the dollar, but the repairs will cost twice what they cost,” Li said.
While the thieves activated an alarm system that automatically alerts San Francisco police, the officers didn’t get to the restaurant in time to stop the robbery, Li told SFGate.
Hanson Li, whose Salt Partners group manages several high-profile restaurants, said three of his companies have been targeted in recent weeks
Lazy Susan’s front door, which is broken open with tools, will cost several thousand dollars to repair
The storefront of the Chinese restaurant was damaged just days before the break-in
The robbers took cash, a laptop and a £50 safe. Li added that the stolen items were worth about $4,000 and it will cost another $2,000 to replace the storefront. The door, which was forced open with tools, will cost another few thousand euros to repair.
The break-in came just weeks after Li’s partner at another company, Last Rites, received a text message from someone threatening to use bear spray at the bar unless they paid $20,000 by Aug. 21.
Li contacted the police, but the bar was never defaced.
However, in another of his bars, Horsefeather, the new seating area was vandalized with graffiti. It is not clear if there was any connection to the extortion attempt.
“They took their time,” Li said of the incident. “We just demolished our pandemic park and rebuilt two new parks according to the new open space code. We spent over $50,000.”
While the outdoor seating area has since been cleared, Li expressed his frustration at the situation and his hope that the city can do more to protect businesses.
All three Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream stores, which are also operated by his group, were broken into this year.
Li’s testimony is just the latest testimony from a business owner fed up with crime in San Francisco, which has seen a massive exodus of big brands.
Stores like Whole Foods and Nordstrom have recently moved out of the California city due to widespread crime and declining footfall.
The once bustling Union Square and downtown San Francisco are a shadow of themselves: rows of empty shops, few crowds even on busy weekend shopping days, and nearby hotels – including a major Hilton – unable to pay their mortgage payments.
Another of Li’s bars, Horsefeather, saw its parks defaced with graffiti earlier this month
A map shows the major companies that have left or are planning to leave San Francisco in recent months
The city has also struggled with rampant fentanyl use and fatal overdoses in recent years, heading into its deadliest year yet.
Preliminary reports indicate that there were 346 drug overdose deaths in the city in the first five months of 2023 – an increase of more than 40 percent from the same period in 2022.
Economists have warned that the city is entering an “urban doom loop,” a vicious circle of interconnected trends and forces that are plunging cities into economic and social ruin.
Widespread theft has been proving to be a problem in the area lately, with a downtown Walgreens deciding to link their freezers together to deter shoplifters.
In recent months, dozens of shopkeepers announced that they would leave the city’s inner city.
Sturdy retailer Old Navy announced last month that they would be closing their flagship store in the area, becoming the latest chain to leave the city.
It comes after retail giant Nordstrom announced they were closing all of their locations in the city.
The company said it would close all remaining stores in the coming months due to San Francisco’s “changing dynamics.”
In April, Whole Foods announced it was closing all of their locations, with Anthropologie and Office Depot also making the same decisions.
These stores joined the growing list of stores that have left the coastal city, including H&M, Marshall’s, Gap and Banana Republic.
A disturbing recent report found that 95 downtown San Francisco retailers have closed their doors since the start of the COVID pandemic, a drop of more than 50 percent.
Of the 203 retailers that opened in the city’s Union Square area in 2019, only 107 are still operating, a 47 percent drop in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.