One more follow-up on the closing of Thrift Town, which still has many a Missionite and vintage store trawler reeling: Mission Local speaks with co-owner Wendy Steinmetz who lays out the multiple reasons the place had to close last week, one of which we already learned was lagging sales.

"The trash compactor issue was salt in the wound," Steinmetz tells them, referring to the fact that in January, Thrift Town received a notice that Recology would require their trash compactor to serviced, i.e. emptied, weekly, instead of only when they requested it as before. Recology claimed this was because there was organic matter in the compactor, but this change meant that Thrift Town's garbage expenses went up suddenly by "thousands of dollars," and this was on top of other expenses that served to make the business untenable.

Steinmetz says that the location's break-even was about $7,000 a day before they closed, and they were only taking in about $3,500 a day in revenue, so you can see the problem.

She also points to the rising minimum wage in the city, and Healthy SF as impacting the bottom line, but it doesn't seem as though those would have been major line items when the biggest issue was simply poor sales, and a plethora of very low-priced merchandise. As Steinmetz says to Mission Local, "We sell $3 items and we have to sell a lot of them [to break even]," and she says that all the increased labor costs "have been hard to absorb."

As the owners explained in their farewell note last week, the landlord had actually been very accommodating, but in the end, even lowering the rent wasn't going to help this place turn things around.

It remains to be seen who might snag this prominent property in the heart of the Mission, but stay tuned as it's unlikely to stay empty for too long.

Previously: Thrift Town Owners Blame Lagging Sales For Closure