Bottom Dollar Food To Close Stores, Sell Chain To Aldi

(Patrick)

A fantastic, descriptive name wasn’t enough to save Bottom Dollar Food, a discount grocery chain with stores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The company announced that it will close all of its stores on January 15th. However, fans of discount food may not need to despair: there’s a deal in progress to sell all of the locations and store leases to a competing discount grocery chain, Aldi.

That deal was announced last November, so the store closings don’t come as a surprise to anyone. However, the $15 million deal hasn’t closed yet, and the closings will leave more than 2,000 people without jobs. The company announced that it will pay severance to store employees, and they will be fine candidates when the new Aldi stores open. That may not be for a while, and Aldi also may not choose to re-open all of the stores it acquires as Aldi locations, especially if they already have a store nearby.

Bottom Dollar is currently part of Delhaize, a company based in Belgium which is also the owner of supermarket chains Food Lion and Hannaford. Aldi, a familiar brand to frugal Consumerists, is based in Germany.

Bottom Dollar employees to receive severance as stores close [Supermarket News]

Pittsburgh-area Bottom Dollar stores set to close Jan. 15 [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist