Foxtrot Market’s assets to be sold in foreclosure sale

Heather Lalley

Less than a month after the sudden shutdown of all 33 Foxtrot Market locations in four cities, a public foreclosure sale will be held Friday to unload “substantially all” of the urban convenience store’s assets.

The sale, slated to be held over Microsoft Teams at 10 a.m. Pacific time, will include “inventory, intellectual property, accounts, chattel paper [a document used to sell property on credit while retaining some interest in the property], documents, furniture & equipment, general intangibles and goods,” according to a published notice.

Representatives from JPMorgan Chase Bank, Foxtrot’s secured creditor and sale organizer with counsel DLA Piper, did not immediately respond to a request for more details on the sale.

There is no mention of Dom’s Kitchen & Market in the sale listing. Foxtrot parent Outfox Hospitality also operated the two-unit, high-end grocery-restaurant hybrid.

The company has yet to declare bankruptcy, though it is expected the retailer will eventually file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.

All Foxtrot locations in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas and Austin, Texas, as well as the two Dom’s stores in Chicago, were suddenly shuttered on April 23. The closures came less than six months after the companies announced a merger and formed Outfox Hospitality.

In the weeks since, several employees have filed lawsuits against the company, alleging they were not provided with the required 60-day notice before their jobs were terminated.  

Food vendors, many of them mom-and-pop operations, were left in the lurch by the unexpected closures of Foxtrot and Dom’s. Some restaurants and other businesses, such as Publican Quality Meats and Paulie Gee’s Pizza in Chicago, have offered their space for pop-up sales to help the vendors sell some of their excess inventory.

Foxtrot was founded in 2014 as a delivery company selling snacks, beer and wine, and grew into a corner store-restaurant hybrid that featured high-end package goods, prepared foods, coffee bars and wine bars. The chain, once billed as the “convenience store of the future,” raised more than $160 million to fuel its growth over its lifetime.

This story was originally featured on CSP Daily News, a sister publication of Supermarket News.