Last September, Berkeley welcomed the first East Bay location of Tartine Bakery inside the Graduate Berkeley hotel. However, just over 7 months later, it appears to be closed for good.

Tartine Union, which has been organizing union efforts at Tartine’s Bay Area locations over the past few months, announced the closure in an Instagram post Friday morning. Berkeley employees reportedly learned from a letter from Tartine's attorneys that the Graduate hotel had ended their contract with Tartine, citing business decline due to COVID-19.

"Tartine Berkeley is officially closed. Tartine Berkeley was the only Tartine workplace that did not receive any support from management for months, did not endure a ruthless anti-union campaign, and voted unanimously 18-0 for the the ILWU to represent them," read the Tartine Union post. "COVID-19 has been the perfect excuse for employers to upend peoples jobs. Tartine Berkeley staff will not have a place to come back to work."

Tartine confirmed that the Berkeley location will not be reopening following the COVID-19 pandemic, but did not provide further comment.

Just days after the bakery's workers voted to unionize — despite the founders' efforts to keep the company union-free — most of the workers were laid off due to the coronavirus crisis.

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"Over the last 6 weeks we have had to lay off most of our staff due to this pandemic," read a statement released by Tartine to Eater. "We remain open in order to continue to provide some employment and to feed our communities. It has been the saddest and darkest time in Tartine’s 20+ year history [...] We don’t know what the future holds as we are literally living day to day. We dream of the days when we are able to hire staff back and hopefully we will be given this opportunity."

Tartine Union also shared a Gofundme link for a hardship fund for laid off or otherwise struggling workers.

This story has been updated to include confirmation of the closure by Tartine.

Madeline Wells is an SFGATE associate digital reporter. Email: madeline.wells@sfgate.com | Twitter: @madwells22