It gets argued again and again that the profit incentive is necessary for cutting inefficiencies, and looking at it from Kroger's perspective, this appears to be another such example. Yet this is only the case for Kroger - when considered in its full context, as a supplier of necessities for working class folks, it's the total opposite. It's the composition fallacy at work: just because companies with a profit motive evolve to cut inefficiencies wherever possible (such as by externalizing costs) does not mean that society as a whole reaps the same benefits.
Of course they're not going to say "we're closing because we don't want to pay our employees a decent wage", that would be bad optics. You can be pretty sure that if you ask employees at the store, they'll say that whatever the stated reason, the intended message from the parent company is "we ain't gonna pay you more".
If you're talking about Seattle, Kroger closed that store because it was underperforming for years, not because of a temporary wage increase that affected every grocery store in the city. Weeks later, they started advertising open positions with wage increases for nearby stores they didn't close...
When it comes to political decisions, firms lie all the time about their motivations. I don't understand how anyone can take what they say at face value, without any means to verify their claims.
The reality is that nobody closes their grocery business because labour costs went up for them and their competitors. Customers still need groceries to live, and you and your competitors just pass the costs directly to them, without any change to profit margins or market share. Closing your grocery over this is as nonsensical as closing your grocery because the spot price of milk went up to $15/gallon.