Sale of Two Baltimore Superfresh Stores Approved

Final court approval was granted late last week for the sale of two Superfresh stores in Baltimore to a little-known natural foods retailer and restaurant operator based in Canada.

The purchase of the two stores by Toronto-based Mrs. Green’s Management Corp. is part of a larger transaction in which Superfresh last week sold a total of 10 stores across central Maryland.

Those sales, in turn, are part of a larger bankruptcy plan by Superfresh parent company Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co (A&P) to close 25 stores in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

All 25 of those stores are to be closed in the first half of July, according to A&P spokesman Scot Hoffman, with the elimination of about 1,500 jobs.

Court approval of the transaction does little to clarify the future of the two Baltimore city locations – one at 41st Street in Hampden and the other at Charles Plaza downtown.

The new owner has announced no plans for the sites and did not respond to numerous phone and e-mail inquiries from North Baltimore Patch.

However, a senior executive of the Toronto company said in an interview earlier this month with the trade newspaper Supermarket News that the new owners were considering a hybrid-style store that would combine traditional groceries, specialty natural foods, and a market-style restaurant.

Mrs. Green’s official Matt Williams told Supermarket News June 9 that plans were incomplete, but that the hybrid approach was under serious consideration.

Another possibility in that Mrs. Green’s may re-sell one or more of its stores to other retailers, according to sources who asked not to be identified.

During the court-ordered auction of the 25 Superfresh stores last month, Maryland-based Giant Foods placed a bid for the 41st Street location. Giant’s bid, however, was rejected by A&P in favor of the bid by Mrs. Green’s, according to court documents in the case.

Court documents also indicate that the labor union representing the bulk of Maryland’s Superfresh workers has concerns about Mrs. Green’s and a possible re-sale. Towson-based United Food & Commercial Workers Local 27 filed an official objection to the Superfresh-Mrs. Green’s transaction in mid June, but has since withdrawn that objection.

At issue was whether Mrs. Green’s intended to operate as a unionized company in Maryland, or whether it would simply re-sell its newly acquired locations to other grocery operators, including non-union operators.

UFCW Local 27 president George Murphy Jr. was not immediately available for comment.

Similar concerns surround some other stores that were included in the transaction approved by the bankruptcy court last week.

In the ten-store deal approved last week, a total of eight stores, including the two Baltimore city stores, go to Mrs. Green’s.      Aside from the Baltimore locations, Mrs. Green’s is buying Superfresh stores in Arnold, Brunswick, Cambridge, Chestertown, Washington DC, and Parkville.

Two other stores are being purchased by Village Super Market Inc., a company that operates more than 20 ShopRite outlets in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

Village Super Market has made an explicit public commitment to operate its newly acquired stores in Lutherville-Timonium and the DC suburb of White Oak as unionized ShopRite outlets.