The tagline “Your best buys are always at Fry’s” once blanketed Bay Area airwaves, but that’s no longer true of the computer retailer’s Palo Alto store.

A temple of electronics known as “ground zero for geek culture,” the Portage Avenue Fry’s Electronics closed last week after almost 30 years in business.

“The Palo Alto store was a fixture for techies everywhere. It’s sad they closed,” said Abbi Vakil, who works as a hardware engineer in the city. “You will not find an engineer in the Bay Area who hasn’t gone to Fry’s for some kind of prototype building.”

Fry’s Electronics, a San Jose company that still has dozens of stores from California to Georgia, including seven in the Bay Area, said on Twitter that it had not been able to renew the Palo Alto store’s lease. But customers from Sunnyvale to Seattle have been sharing photos and videos of empty shelves on social media for months, raising speculation that the chain may be heading for bankruptcy or shrinking significantly.

Fry’s has adamantly denied the rumors, saying the shelves are empty because it has shifted to a consignment model, meaning that suppliers get paid for goods only after a store has sold them. It said on Twitter it’s not going out of business, explaining that the shift to consignment takes time and that 245 vendors have agreed to the new terms. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

Consignment is rare among consumer electronics retailers, though San Francisco’s B8ta uses it to sell newer, more experimental gadgets, and the company working to reopen Toys R Us stores is using a similar business model, according to Chain Store Age magazine.

The challenge is persuading suppliers to embrace the model. If they don’t, then there won’t be any goods to fill the shelves.

“If shelves are empty and they (Fry’s) have moved everything to consignment, that does sound suspicious, because it suggests a cash crunch,” said Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester Research, a market research firm. “Most big-box retailers will try to pack shelves to look full.”

Consignment can work for some products, but those sold by Fry’s — once hard-to-find gadgets and computer parts — are widely available at low prices elsewhere, she said.

Founded in 1985 by brothers John, Randy and David Fry and business partner Kathryn Kolder, Fry’s catered to Silicon Valley’s appetite for computer hardware, everything from routers to motherboards. It even expanded into kitchen appliances and office furniture. Its stores often had quirky themes, ranging from sci-fi in Burbank to Mayan in San Jose. In the mid-1990s, before high-speed internet connections made software easy to download, the stores served as a teenage hangout, allowing customers to play video games and try new hardware.

Besides Best Buy, few computer chains like Fry’s are still in business. Circuit City, CompUSA, Computer City, Incredible Universe and others are long gone. Target, Walmart and other general retailers now have well-stocked electronics sections. And electronics are a big category for Amazon, which Fry’s once sought to compete with by buying online retailer Cyberian Outpost after the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2001.

The situation at Fry’s upsets longtime customers like Sam Tang, a marketer in Seattle.

“It makes me sad to see it in this state, but I just wish it would go faster,” Tang said. He’s frequented the Renton store, about 15 miles from Seattle. For months, the shelves have been empty. Employees told him that the likelihood of that store remaining open is slim.

Tang said it reminds him of the fate of the Blockbuster video store chain — another famous retail name that has all but vanished.

Shwanika Narayan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: shwanika.narayan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @shwanika