Cracker Barrel Is Latest Company To Flee Portland, Oregon As Crime Continues To Rise

If you need a wooden rocking chair in the Portland, Oregon area, don't plan on Cracker Barrel being there to save the day. The national breakfast and cornbread chain announced last week that its Portland stores will be closing due to economics as the Rose City continues a slide into the abyss that even the wokes at the Los Angeles Times have noticed.

Cracker Barrel joins Walmart, Applebees, and even Starbucks which have either closed up businesses or are scheduled to close businesses in the very near future.

"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," the company told Fox Business in a statement.

"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 on March 20. 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."

Applebees and Walmart have both used similar language to announce their own closures. In October, Starbucks said it was closing locations due to safety issues.

Translation: Portland is such a hellhole right now that national chains don't see a net positive to stay.

It's a mess. It's been a mess. And the locals don't see a way to stop it from continuing to be a mess because the wokes refuse to budge on their woke ways.

In December, the Los Angeles Times laid it all out in a feature on the destruction of a city that used to be able to be progressive while maintaining safety and order.

Reporter Jenny Jarvie found in her report -- "What’s the matter with Portland? Shootings, theft and other crime test city’s progressive strain" -- that there are some who feel Portland is in a bad place because IT ISN'T WOKE ENOUGH.

Environmental biologist and data analyst Juniper Simonis, 38, claimed the city was failing the homeless by doing sweeps to clear out area that have become so infested with camps that businesses cannot operate.

Simonis believes Portland has to become even more woke.

“There’s a lack of resources, and I think of being liberal in terms of spending money to provide support services,” she told the Times. “Trying to regulate homelessness out of a city, I don’t view that as liberal at all.”

Is it any surprise Cracker Barrel and Walmart are hitting the road?

There's no helping this mental illness.

Crime in Portland is off the charts

While the homelessness crisis rolls on, the Portland police (the department is down nearly 200 sworn officers since 2019) must deal with a city that has seen shootings triple, record levels of homicides, car thefts that have doubled since 2019 and more citizens who are saying they don't feel safe downtown in a city that has lost 2,600 businesses since March 2020.

The Portland, Oregon police department has 200 fewer sworn officers compared to 2019. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

Will Portland ever recover to be a lib city that can be lib, yet care about law and order?

In October, just 11% of Portlanders said in a poll that the city was headed in the right direction. Even the Oregon Public Broadcasting organization is running headlines titled "Oregon population decline is cause for concern, say economists."

So between rising crime, homelessness, Black Lives Matter destroying the police department and downtown and a populace that is either fleeing or not coming because the businesses have left, Portland is at a huge crossroads.

Cracker Barrel leaving isn't some grand statement to the times in Portland. It's simply a reflection on what the place has become. It's turning into a place that people and businesses avoid.

And that's a reflection of what happens when you go full woke.

It all comes crashing down.