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Manager Scott Doddington and many of his fellow workers at the San Francisco Cody’s store will be out of their jobs effective April 20. 

“Cody’s didn’t perform as expected,” Doddington told the Daily Planet on Thursday.  

The Stockton Street store was opened 18 months ago with much fanfare by then-owner Andy Ross, who subsequently closed Cody’s on Telegraph Avenue and sold the remaining two stores to Yohan, Inc., a Japanese company.  

Cody’s store on Fourth Street in Berkeley is doing well and will remain open, Doddington said. Since the workforce is unionized, some of the senior San Francisco workers will be offered jobs in the Berkeley store.  

“We believed in our San Francisco store, we loved its space and stock and its employees and customers, but it simply has not attracted enough attention or enough customers. We cannot afford to keep it open. It’s heartbreaking to close a bookstore,” Ross said in a prepared statement. 

“Cody’s will continue to do business in Berkeley, focusing on its core elements: its Fourth Street store, its in-store author events, and its school, library, and corporate services, as well as continuing to do business servicing a wide variety of off-site events all around the Bay Area, including book fairs,” the statement said. 

Cody’s Books was founded about 50 years ago by Pat Cody and her late husband Fred Cody.