Only found out this afternoon that the Bottom Dollar Food chain will be closing December 31st. It wont mean anything to those outside of the PA/NJ area (there had been earlier stores in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, but those had apparently been either converted to Food Lions or sold to another, regional chain in 2012), but over the past four or so years it has become my primary market. In retrospect its not so surprising that Aldi, which was their main competitor, made an offer to buy out the 66 locations. Aldi had tried to compete by adding more brand names into the mix, but still generally asked more than Bottom Dollar did despite Aldi sticking to the look of a small, tidy warehouse while Bottom Dollar gave the appearance of a more traditional grocery store. I havent seen any indication that Bottom Dollar was struggling financially, so at least for the moment it appears to be another case of people higher up going for a big, quick pay day. Said pay day will be at the expense of some 2,200 workers and those of us who came to rely on the store for a majority of the groceries, and all with no serious expectation that this will in any way improve Aldis product profile nor lower its brand-name items pricing. For me itll just be a very small inconvenience -- a reduction of options. For some other shoppers itll be a much more substantial hit, and, of course, its potentially devastating to those workers. Between an overheard conversation and what I found out directly from my cashier today, they dropped the news on the employees the evening before the public announcement. Some flimsy boilerplate for applying with the new owners to work somewhere (in the case of this local one the nearest Aldi is a minutes walk away, so this Bottom Dollar will not be simply re-signed as an Aldi) was offered, but in general it was simply a notice that theyre out of a job in much less than two months. I imagine this is supposed to just be viewed under the heading of its just business, but that doesnt wash for me. If the chain had been failing, that would be another matter, but there are no indications that had been the case here. Given that the parent company is a subsidiary of Delhaize America (headquartered in North Caroline), which is in turn a subsidiary of the Belgian Delhaize Group, Im not expecting any more information to be forthcoming.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 22:00:11 +0000