One of the largest natural and organic food retailer (which sold Scottish salmon) in the country has shut down.
Organic grocery chain Earth Fare is going out of business and will liquidise merchandise at all of its stores with 50 locations in 10 states throughout the Southeast and Midwest United States, it wrote in a press release.
Since 1975, the store prided itself of supplying produce that was free of hormones, artificial sweeteners, antibiotics and trans fats.
It also was a major seller of Scottish salmon – supplied from an undisclosed organic salmon farmer.
CNN reported that closing of the store represents part of broader pattern of shrinking traditional supermarkets facing competition from giants Walmart, Amazon, Aldi, Lidl and others who pressure smaller stores to keep prices low. This was reflected by Earth Fare in its statement.
“While many of these initiatives improved the business, continued challenges in the retail industry impeded the company’s progress as well as its ability to refinance its debt. As a result, Earth Fare is not in a financial position to continue to operate on a go-forward basis. As such, we have made the difficult, but necessary decision to commence inventory liquidation sales while we continue to engage in a process to find potential suitors for our stores,” added Earth Fare.
