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Americas' Food Basket Shuts 3 Hub Stores

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Jenn Abelson, The Boston Globe

Dec. 28--Americas' Food Basket, a local grocery chain specializing in ethnic foods, shuttered all three stores in Boston this weekend after failing to recover from slow sales at its newest shop in Dorchester's Fields Corner.

The closures come only four months after city and neighborhood groups cobbled together $370,000 in small business loans because the supermarket had no cash to pay its vendors. Neighborhood activists and city officials say the loss of Americas' Food Basket, one of the area's largest Latino-owned businesses, is a huge blow, cutting off the only local grocery store in several low-income neighborhoods. The chains' other stores were in Dorchester's Uphams Corner and in Hyde Park.

"It's been a long difficult process for everyone involved," said Keith Hunt, assistant director of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development. "We did everything possible to maintain these stores, these jobs. They provided an enormous service to the community and it's going to be sorely missed."

Andre Medina, the Cuban-born entrepreneur who started Americas' Food Basket, did not return calls seeking comment. Medina launched the flagship supermarket in Uphams Corner in 1992, at a time when few were willing to invest in the area. He is credited with helping to revitalize the ailing shopping district into one that bustles with more than 70 businesses.

In Fields Corner, Americas' Food Basket gave residents new hope after it took over Midland Foods, a supermarket with a record of health and sanitary code violations. But Midland's problems may have been too much to overcome as residents had shifted their grocery shopping elsewhere, city officials said. In addition, prices at Americas' Food Basket were often higher than at Midland, according to ACORN, a local community group, which said it had received some complaints from residents this year.

The Fields Corner store, which opened in January, never met its projections of hitting about $200,000 a week in sales, Hunt said, and by the end was pulling in about $125,000 a week. Americas' Food Basket had used the assets from its other two stores to secure a loan to finance renovations and stock the shelves at the new Fields Corner shop. So when sales lagged in Fields Corner and Medina couldn't make payments, that triggered the closing of the other two supermarkets.

In recent months, creditors rejected selling the Fields Corner store and restructuring the terms of the deal as a way to salvage the Hyde Park and Uphams Corner shops, Hunt said. He added that he expected Medina to file for bankruptcy court protection.

In the meantime, city officials said they would help find jobs for the 125 full- and part-time employees who worked at Americas' Food Basket.

Earlier this summer, Medina made a plea to the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, a local organization that helps build affordable housing and fund small businesses, saying at the time that he needed $450,000 due to slow sales. Within days, he received about $370,000 in loans from the group, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the city's Department of Neighborhood Development, and other groups.

"We knew it was a risky loan. We just didn't think" the Fields Corner store was in such bad shape, said Jeanne DuBois, head of the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp. in Uphams Corner. She said her group might try to recover its investment. "It's a horrible situation. There's a lot of anger in Uphams Corner that our lovely store and the one in Hyde Park were victims of the Fields Corner store."

Shutting down these grocery stores is frustrating, some residents and city officials say, because Boston has struggled over the past decade to open new supermarkets and make up for ones lost in the 1990s. For some people, especially those in minority neighborhoods where the supermarket flight has been the most acute, grocery shopping today requires a trip to the suburbs or at least across town.

In Boston, the closing of the America's Food Basket chain cuts the number of grocery stores nearly 9 percent to 32 stores from 35 shops. Within neighborhoods, however, the loss is even greater. In Dorchester, there are five supermarkets -- down from seven -- and Hyde Park now has two grocery stores, down from three.

Meanwhile, Four Corners in Dorchester is still waiting for its supermarket. Americas' Food Basket, which had planned to build a store on a city-owned lot, pulled out of the project this summer after yearlong discussions.

"It's important to have supermarkets in the neighborhood. A lot of folks don't have their own transportation and can't get to some of the bigger stores even if they're in the same town," said Robert Thornell, a longtime Dorchester resident. "Americas' Food Basket was convenient and I found it pretty nice."

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Source: The Boston Globe

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