Andronico’s Community Markets is in negotiations with Renovo Capital to obtain Debtor-in-Possession financing and sell the company to the investor group, as part of the Chapter 11 filing in the Oakland division of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California.
Bill Andronico, Andronico’s CEO, said: “This is a bittersweet moment in our history. We have struggled mightily to keep going, but the combination of the economic downturn and a broken balance sheet was too heavy a burden. The good news is that this deal preserves our markets and keeps our employees working.”
Andronico’s markets have struggled in recent years after an aggressive expansion programme in which it took on significant debt to develop stores in Danville, Walnut Creek and Emeryville in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
These stores are now closed, but Andronico said he was unable to get its bank lenders to restructure their claims and the remaining stores were in too much debt to continue under family ownership.
In 2010 Andronico’s encountered a daunting retail environment, and replaced nearly all of its executive management team with a core group of experienced industry veterans from Whole Foods Market and Safeway. The new team began the work to stabilise the business but the lack of resources did not allow for a full recovery.
Source: Andronico’s
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