Earth Fare, which has around 50 stores, mainly in the South, said Monday that it would begin to liquidate merchandise at all of its stores. It will attempt to find a buyer for its locations and other company assets.
“The outlook for small and regional grocers is becoming increasingly challenging in a rapidly changing digital food retail landscape,” Kelly Bania, analyst at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a research note to clients.
The number of supermarkets in the United States declined by 1.3% last year to under 25,000 as SuperValu, Southeastern Grocers and Tops shuttered stores, according to Inmar Analytics. The number of US supermarkets will decline by 6% in the next five years, the firm predicted.
Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Earth Fare was founded in 1975. The grocer sells natural and organic foods that are free of hormones, artificial sweeteners, antibiotics and trans fats. That strategy was designed to help Earth Fare stand out in the cutthroat grocery sector.
In 2012, a private equity firm purchased Earth Fare.
Just last January, Scorpiniti pledged the chain would roughly double its store count in the United States over the next five years.
But a year later, Earth Fare has collapsed.
“Earth Fare is not in a financial position to continue to operate on a go-forward basis,” it said.
Source : CNN