Owner blames rampant crime as last Denny's closes in San Francisco

San Francisco's last Denny's diner has closed, with the franchise owner blaming vandalism and alleged dining and dashing for the store's shuttering.

The restaurant location closed on Aug. 1 with a sign saying such displayed in a storefront window and a yellow Denny's sign outside painted over as of Monday.

The owner of the restaurant, who previously closed another San Francisco location he owned in 2019, said people kept skipping out without paying their bills.

"We're the only store left, and we operated until the last day that we could," Denny's franchisee Chris Haque told local news site SFGATE Monday. "The cost of doing business is tremendous. There's vandalism, and people come and eat and walk away, and there's no one to stop them."

A decline in the city's convention traffic in recent years also hurt his bottom line, Mr. Haque said.

The closure comes just months after a Denny's across the Bay Bridge in Oakland closed in late January after 54 years in business.

An In-N-Out Burger location near the closed Oakland Denny's has also shut down.

In-N-Out CEO Denny Warnick told the San Francisco Chronicle that people at that store had been "victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft and armed robberies."

South Carolina-based Denny’s, which operates more than 1,600 locations in the U.S. and abroad, said in a statement that it "does not comment on the closure specifics for our franchise locations" and that it "offers its heartfelt thanks to the team members and the local community for their love of the Denny’s brand."