Urban convenience-store retailer Choice Market Holdings Inc., which filed for bankruptcy in May, has closed its doors, according to a LinkedIn post by Founder and CEO Mike Fogarty.
“After several months of working through a potential reorganization, unfortunately Choice is closing its doors for good,” he said.
“I want to thank every investor, employee, supplier, friend and family member who believed in me and our mission of making good food a little more convenient,” Fogarty said. “The past seven years have been some the most challenging and yet rewarding of my life. I am hopeful that Choice made our industry think differently about what it means to push boundaries and innovate for the next generation who values quality, health and convenience. I plan to take all the learnings and apply them to a new chapter. Until then, I just want to express my gratitude and appreciation. Onward.”
- Fogarty was one of CSP’s Power 20 for 2019. Choice Market was one of CSP’s 20 Tech Innovators for 2020.
In 2017, Fogarty pivoted from pharmaceuticals and immersed himself in convenience retailing, launching Choice Market. He believed that the future of convenience-store retailing was in frictionless, contactless shopping across multiple platforms.
Choice Market operated five 3,000- to 5,000-square-foot convenience stores in Denver. They combined convenience, service and technology with fresh food and groceries from local vendors and a curated, environmentally friendly product selection including everyday necessities. It also offers seasonal meals from a full-service, scratch kitchen with classically trained chefs. Choice Market worked with local farmers to source most of its ingredients and products, including organic produce and antibiotic-free and nitrate-free proteins. One location offered fuel.
Denver-based Choice Market Holdings Inc., along with subsidiaries Choice Market Uptown LLC and Choice Market Bannock LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 6, according to filings with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado in Denver.
“We had been navigating a lot of the same challenges other retailers, especially smaller format and the higher-growth retailers were facing in terms of inflation, in terms of people trading down to value-oriented products, lack of labor,” Fogarty told CSP concerning the bankruptcy. “You name it, it was every headwind we could face. Sometimes you hit unforeseen headwinds like a pandemic They had an impact on the overarching business, and certain locations were more susceptible to those headwinds, and then we had other locations that were doing quite well, so it was kind of a mixed bag. As a small retailer, one bad location can really have a dramatic impact on the overall business. That essentially is where we landed. So it was a culmination of factors, and unfortunately, we hit a wall where we had to do what we could to restructure and navigate the process.”
Fogarty had hoped, going forward, to shift its strategy to the smaller-footprint, automated Mini Mart format, and most of the conversations has had over the past year or so has been around that concept. Choice Market was launching new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Mini-Marts. It launched its first fully cashierless Mini-Mart at The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in October 2022. The retailer planned to scale this format nationally through strategic partnerships with hospitals, apartment developers, music and entertainment venues, airports, electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations and college campuses.
The company submitted a restructuring plan in early September; however, financing that Choice Market had lined up earlier in the year fell through for reasons unrelated to Choice Market, Fogarty said, so the plan was “no longer feasible,” according to the court documents, and on Oct. 4, the judge granted a request to convert the bankruptcies to Chapter 7 liquidation.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.