Foxtrot To Reopen Its First Store This Week

Foxtrot is set to return after a tumultuous saga that featured the grocery retailer abruptly shuttering all of its stores, leaving vendors, employees and customers in a lurch. 

The company's new owners, led by Foxtrot founder Mike LaVitola, will reopen the  store at 23 W. Maple St. in Gold Coast on Wednesday, Foxtrot announced in a press release. The store will likely look the same to customers, but Foxtrot is expanding its coffee and food offerings, the company said.

Foxtrot plans to reopen additional locations in Chicago and Dallas through 2025, according to the release.

Earlier this year, LaVitola said the first two stores to make a comeback would likely be the Gold Coast location and its Old Town shop, but the company did not provide a timeline for additional openings. 

Foxtrot launched online in 2014 and opened its first store in Fulton Market in 2015, its sights set on establishing an upscale convenience store chain. It expanded to Texas and  Washington, D.C., as it raised $160M in venture capital funding as of 2022.

But the company closed all of its locations in Chicago, D.C., Austin and Dallas at the end of April, shuttering them so rapidly that employees shooed customers out of stores, locked the doors and left stocks of perishables and prepared foods to rot — which they did for days on end.

An onslaught of legal woes have come Foxtrot's way since the abrupt shutdowns.

Former employees have filed at least three lawsuits against the company, alleging it did not properly notify workers of impending closures and violated worker protection laws. Two produce suppliers sued Foxtrot for allegedly failing to pay for more than $208K in produce and other goods before the shutdown.

Outfox Hospitality filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Delaware in mid-May. Outfox has between 5,001 and 10,000 estimated creditors, according to the filing. The estimated value of its assets and liabilities are both between $10M and $50M.