The exodus out of Portland, Oregon continues. Businesses are closing and residents are moving out of town. The latest casualty is the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. The popular chain is the second big chain to close all its stores in a major American city.

What caused this move? My first thought was a common one. I thought it must be the rise in crime or maybe the homelessness crisis in urban areas. No. Not this time. The reason given by Cracker Barrel is that the restaurant chain could not recover from the pandemic in Portland. Restaurant locations in the surrounding area of Portland are also being closed. The last 2 remaining locations in Portland will close. Locations in Beaverton and Tualatin were closed last week. A third location in Bend, about 3.5 hours away from Portland, was also closed.

The company released a statement:

“As a standard course of business, we continually evaluate the performance of our stores, using various criteria to ensure we are meeting the needs of our guests and our business. With that, we are saddened that we have been unable to overcome the impact the pandemic had on our business and have made the difficult decision to close the Beaverton, Tualatin, and Bend locations.”

“The decision to close a store is never one we take lightly, and our focus right now is in assisting our impacted employees during this transition. We extend our sincere thanks to our employees who worked so hard to keep our fireplace glowing and to the guests who have dined with us, celebrated with us, and made us part of their community. We look forward to reconnecting with them at other times at nearby Cracker Barrels in the future.”

Crime and homelessness are the usual reasons given in recent months for businesses leaving the city. Walmart recently closed its Portland stores.

“We have nearly 5,000 stores across the U.S. and unfortunately some do not meet our financial expectations,” Walmart said in its announcement, according to KPTV. “While our underlying business is strong, these specific stores haven’t performed as well as we hoped.”

The Walmart CEO didn’t cite retail theft with the latest closing but he did talk about either raising prices or closing stores if rising crime continued to be an issue last December.

“Theft is an issue. It’s higher than what it has historically been,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in December on CNBC. He added that “prices will be higher and/or stores will close” if authorities don’t crack down on prosecuting shoplifting crimes.

Even Nike has closed stores in Portland. A real estate developer said the city is out of control and unrecognizable.

“It’s gotta stop,” real estate developer and lifelong Portland native Dustin Michael Miller told “Fox & Friends” earlier this month after walking into his office to find bullet holes in the window.

“Our city is out of control. It is unrecognizable. I’ve lived here my whole life, and it’s just deteriorated over the last five years.”

Between the rise of Black Lives Matter and the Summer of Love riots in 2020 plus the election of Soros-backed D.A.s allowing criminals to remain on the streets, it’s obvious why so many businesses are suffering. Cities are dying. Stores are boarded up in downtown areas and videos are common of gangs of thieves stealing merchandise in broad daylight. That happens in both high-end stores and drugstores. Who would have ever imagined that common items like toiletries and shampoo would have to be locked in display cases? Yet, here we are.

So, goodbye to Cracker Barrel in Portland, Oregon. Between the pandemic and rising crime, not to mention the higher costs of doing business due to Bidenflation, it’s a wonder any business can survive in today’s business environment.