Beloved Hayes Valley patisserie and candy shop Miette, which would seem to have an ideal location in one of San Francisco's most thriving shopping hubs, is leaving the neighborhood for the tonier climes of Pacific Heights.

French macaron and cupcake specialist Miette, known as much for its charming, pastel-painted, dollhouse-like store on Patricia's Green in Hayes Valley as for its picture-perfect sweets and kid-enticing bags of candy, has seen a drop a business according to owner Meg Ray. Speaking to the SF Business Times, she blames both the lack of foot traffic on the car-free section of Octavia Street, a recent rash of shoplifting, and a "tremendous uptick in drug use on my corner."

And, so, the much-loved shop at 449 Octavia, which Ray first opened in 2006, will close this weekend, on September 14, and later this month Miette will open a new flagship location at 2252 Fillmore Street, across from the historic, soon-to-be-renovated Clay Theatre in Pacific Heights.

This will keep Miette's store count at five, with other locations at the Ferry Building, as well as in Oakland, San Ramon, and Larkspur, but it will mean the loss of the store's 19-year-old original spot.

"A lot of love went into that store," Ray tells the Business Times, wistfully.

Ray says that in addition to the "insurmountable" shoplifting problem, she has seen sales at the store go below 50% of what they had been in previous years. Plus, she tells the Business Times, "every morning I had to clean human bodies and waste off my steps."

She adds, "I love Hayes Valley and will miss it and all my fellow merchants."

Reports of more crime, as well as more visible homelessness, have increased over the last two years in the typically more safe and sanitized Hayes Valley, and complaints from neighborhood residents seemed to grow louder earlier this year. Along with 16th and Mission streets, sections of Hayes Valley appeared to be seeing a flow of migrating drug users from Sixth Street, Civic Center, and the Tenderloin amid Mayor Daniel Lurie's aggressive efforts to "clean up" those areas — the whac-a-mole phenomenon that any city leader of the last 25 years could have told Lurie would happen.

Illegal fires at nearby encampments along Octavia also raised alarm bells at the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Associationas far back as two years ago, which they complained bitterly about after their complaints to the city went ignored. This was after one such fire likely caused a four-alarm conflagration at a building under construction at Octavia and Oak in August 2023.

Miette's new location, opening September 25, will feature its "trademark glass apothacary jars filled with cookies and macarons," according to its website, as well as "shortbread cookies, and over 100 bins of Swedish Pick-n-Mix."

The new store will also be in the center of the revitalization project that's been undertaken by local billionaire Neil Mehta, who bought the Clay Theatre as well as multiple other properties nearby on the Upper Fillmore corridor. As he told a podcast host earlier this year, he seemed to think Pacific Heights needed his help — more than other neighborhoods? — and he decided to dedicate "a reasonable amount of money to trying to fix just my street in San Francisco." Mehta's tactics, which have included apparently trying to edge out longstanding businesses, have been met with pushback, but his plans to create an arthouse cinema and bar-restaurant at the Clay sound promising.

According to the Business Times, New York-based footwear brand Boot Co. is already set to take over Miette's space on Octavia.