Foxtrot simplifies operations, reopens first location in Chicago

Foxtrot Cafe and Market reopened its doors Thursday in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood—the first of about 10 locations the urban convenience-store chain plans to revive after abruptly closing in April under former parent company Outfox Hospitality.

The store, buzzing with shoppers Thursday morning, is located at 23 W. Maple St. It offered free coffee to customers from 6 to 10 a.m. on opening day, plus complimentary samples of new cookies and a berry chai refresher. On Friday, there will be a happy hour starting at 3 p.m. that features $4 local draft pours and $7 wine pours until close.

Foxtrot's assets were sold to holding company Further Point Enterprises at an online auction in May for more than $2.2 million. Days later, Outfox Hospitality, parent company of  Foxtrot and small-format grocer Dom’s Kitchen & Market, filed for bankruptcy.

Further Point then approached Mike LaVitola (pictured above), the original Foxtrot founder, and asked if he wanted to return to help run a revival of Foxtrot, he said.

“For me, that was a function of ‘is our team excited to come back, are our vendors excited to come back?’ If you don’t have a great team, there’s no point in doing any of this,” LaVitola told CSP Daily News at the opening Thursday morning. “[I wanted to] make sure local vendors that we love were excited to come back and that we had the right team in place. Once I knew that our operation folks were on board, I was on board.”

The core team is much smaller now, made up of about 10 people who worked with Foxtrot in the past, he said. The store team, such as the store leaders, the assistant store leaders and district managers, is also made up of previous employees.

“There was a lot of competition given how [past employees] were affected by the closure,” LaVitola said. 

Some laid-off employees had filed a lawsuit against Foxtrot in April after the sudden store closures. Foxtrot had 33 locations in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas and Austin, Texas, all of which were shuttered in April. Block Club Chicago reportedFoxtrot's vendors faced unpaid bills and stranded products after the stores shut down.

Simplifying Operations

The new Foxtrot has “simplified its operations,” LaVitola said, going back to how it operated three or four years ago. The company ran with about 2,500 SKUs at first, which grew to about 5,000 in the last five years, he said. 

“It was very unsustainable, and I think that led to a lot of the problems,” he said. 

Now, the chain is focusing on small vendors as its first priority. It currently has about 100 total vendors, and when it comes to individual brands, a couple hundred, he said. Foxtrot is also continuing its private label. 

Some brands that are returning include: All Together Now, Barbet, Bawi, Better Sour, Big Fat Cookie, Bon Bon, Chai, Cookies, Courtside, Dad Grass, Do-Rite Donuts, Fishwife, Frankies 457, Freeman House, French Squirrel, Gelato Boy and Gemma Foods. They're also selling products from Heywell, Hop Butcher, Hopewell, Joggy, JOM, Jumbo Times Wine, Kyoto Black, La Boulangerie, Laoban, Leisure Water, Lexington Bakes, Life Raft Treats, Mama Teav’s, Marz, Mercado Famous and Metric Coffee.

“Folks were really using us as a cafe and a coffee shop, but when we set up the store initially, it was really more of a market,” he said. “The market is still very important, but we learned a lot of lessons about how to run a coffee line, service times. A lot of the work we did [for the reopening] was behind the bar to speed up service.”

Coffee offerings include exclusive blends The Milk Man Blend and Early Train Espresso, crafted specifically for Foxtrot cafes. Foxtrot will continue to offer retail bean and consumer-packaged goods (CPG) selections from longtime Chicago roasters and partners including Metric and Kyoto Black.

The chain also streamlined its foodservice menu to its best items to reduce wait times for customers. 

“The space is active, it’s fun,” LaVitola said. “The shelf is filled with so many of our friends who get to make these awesome products. Our vendors are excited to come back, excited to have an outlet to share their products and that’s what gets me excited.”

The convenience-store chain has plans to open 10 stores, mostly in Chicago and a couple in Dallas. The Old Town location in Chicago will be the next to open in a couple of weeks, LaVitola said. After that, Foxtrot aims to open a store every month. 

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.

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