Your Business ‘Failed.’ You Obviously Messed Up. Blame California!

Everyone loves a good scapegoat

Earlier this year — scratch that — in 2023, I was walking down the main street in my Los Angeles neighborhood.

I noticed that a bakery, called Sweet Lady Jane, was opening on the block.

It piqued my interest because I lived within walking distance to one when I resided in Santa Monica. My daughter liked going there occasionally for a pastry.

At the time, I thought they only had one other location — on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. Not far from the no longer forthcoming store in my current neighborhood.

Anyhow, the news broke that they were opening this new location last summer. Over the course of the second half of 2023, they put up signage and just before Christmas started stocking the store. I expected a holiday or new year opening.

Turns out this happened —

Legendary Los Angeles bakery Sweet Lady Jane closed all six locations (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Calabasas, Encino, West Hollywood, and San Fernando) on December 31, 2023, following 35 years of business. In an Instagram post and on the bakery’s website, the owners shared appreciation for its loyal customers while noting the challenges of running a bakery in California, “lease obligations,” and paying a living wage without increasing the cost of goods. The closure feels especially abrupt given the bakery’s newly renovated Encino store and planned expansion into Marina Del Rey and Larchmont; the West Hollywood shop closed at the end of last year for renovations.

Abrupt is a nice way to put it.

But Eater LA has never been one to pick a side. The entire publication feels more promotional than helpful or insightful on the nation’s dining and drinking scene. Because how can you not be skeptical, if not critical of what happened?

Here’s the wording from Sweet Lady Jane’s post —

While the support and loyalty of our customers has been strong, sales are not enough to continue doing business in the state of California, allowing us to service our lease obligations and pay our treasured employees a living wage without passing those costs directly on to you.

In isolation, it’s not a big deal. A long-time local bakery chain closed. So what?

But, taken together with the absurdly high cost of eating and drinking out and the unwarranted shit cities are taking these days (especially cities in California), it sort of is a big deal.

On one hand, thanks for not passing the costs of doing business onto us. On the other, are you fucking kidding me? You’ve been doing that for years with prices among the highest in the area for baked goods.

But, setting that aside, how do you lease a space on one of LA’s most expensive and hottest streets one moment, start stocking it up until a couple weeks ago, then decide to close all of your locations — including another opening in another desirable area — the next? Even a poorly-run business couldn’t possibly make such objectively stupid moves.

How a place that has run an apparently successful business for 35 years could determine over the course of six months or so that it can no longer “service our lease obligations and pay our treasured employees a living wage without passing those costs directly on to you” is beyond my comprehension.

And maybe Sweet Lady Jane’s, too.

Who signed the leases for these two new stores? Who inquired in the first place? Didn’t this person — or group of people — see the writing on the wall?

So, yeah, shut down without, allegedly giving your employees any notice, and do what every failed business does these days — blame California! It’s much sexier than blaming Canada. If the rest of the nation can blame California for everything they perceive as wrong with the world, why can’t a humble bakery — that created one hell of a following on the backs of well-off Californians — do likewise?

I’m not the only one who’s slightly amused, if not agitated. Here’s a representative look at the Instagram comments to Sweet Lady Jane’s post —

When businesses use California — and other, similar locations — as scapegoats, it’s not good for business. For hospitality in general. For employees. For consumers.

And it’s even worse for cities.

You make clear errors as a business and then decide to add to false narratives about cities. False narratives that are dangerous. Because people believe them. And act on them. They make choices not based on reality, but the proliferation of myths.

Walgreens. Starbucks. Target. They’re all closing stores. And using faulty data to blame it on crime, not the real culprit — over-expansion and poor location selection. Turns out there’s often higher crime in the areas where these companies keep stores open than where they close them.

The problem isn’t crime; it’s the pandemic-related decline of downtown foot traffic and an increase in online shopping.

Maybe cities shouldn’t even be the focus of these conversations. When you look at the list of store closures from major chains, there’s often more suburban locations than urban ones.

But none of these fact(or)s matter. Because the damage is already done — and being done.

The real crime here is the crime of opportunity for businesses who made miscalculations — sometimes huge ones — to blame California, effectively turning their backs on the communities responsible for their previous success.

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