Another KFC/Taco Bell appears to have bitten the dust in San Francisco this year: the joint fast food location at 1900 Irving St. in the Sunset has been closed since October. Its windows are covered up, and signs posted around the building vaguely say “closed during construction” without any start or end dates for the work.
We spoke today with a KFC spokeswoman, who said the signs referred to road work happening nearby on Irving Street. The construction was affecting foot traffic into the restaurant, the spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, she added, “Folks reached out to lease the property, so now [the Irving location] is exploring whether they’ll reopen or not.”
So it may not be the end of this KFC/Taco Bell, but the outlook isn't good. The spokeswoman said there is no projected date for when it might reopen. Advertisements to lease the location have surfaced a few places online, with one saying the place has been available since November 2016. It's asking $10,683-$11,000 per month for the 3,885-square-foot space.
Requests to the real estate broker were not returned.
It’s not been an easy time for fast food in San Francisco of late. In January, we saw two other KFC/Taco Bells close: one on Geary and Steiner streets and another at Fillmore and Lombard. McDonald’s, too, appears to be in a rough patch, with its building at 3rd & Townsend closing around October and its Van Ness location shuttering last year. The location on 16th and Mission streets also closed last year.
The closures have sparked a number of dire forecasts from local news, with CBS speculating that San Francisco could be too expensive for fast food joints to afford the city’s pricey rental rates. In February this year, NBC Bay Area noted that McDonald’s closed more stores nationwide in 2015 than it opened. More than 150 locations were closed compared to only 63 new ones that year.
