Owners Scott and Robin Rogers announced last week that Aldrich’s Market will close its doors at the end of April, selling off the last of its stock with no plans to reopen.
The impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic was the tipping point for the market, Scott Rogers said, and solidified the need to close.
He said he believes the store has lost relevance in the community, having to compete with larger grocery stores. The made-to-order food in the deli and at Sushi Ichiba accounted for a large part of their revenue, and those sales greatly diminished during March and April’s widespread shutdowns and social-distancing orders. Grocery sales increased, but it wasn’t enough for the business to continue making payroll, Scott said.
“This ending has been written from many sources and circumstances. Perhaps this phoenix can rise again,” the Rogers wrote in a letter to The Leader.
Community response to the announcement has been overwhelmingly positive, Scott Rogers said, but he feels most people have moved past attempting to help and toward acceptance and grieving.
He said they have received a lot of offers for help through fundraisers but that nothing can solve the fact that the business itself is no longer sustainable.
“There is a lot of spoken support for ‘buy local, buy small’ that doesn’t really translate into customers,” Rogers said. “We just never had enough base support; it was always constant feast or famine.”
The store employs 25 full-time employees working the cashier, deli and sushi bar. Rogers said he’s grateful for the employees, who have always been the best part of operating the business. Aldrich’s is and always has been a very social store, Scott Rogers said, where people come to get food and spend time chatting with neighbors. With daily social life at a near standstill in Washington and across the country, foot traffic was largely impacted. It became clear two weeks into the governor's "Stay Home, Stay Healthy" order that the market would have to shut its doors.
Sam Hobart, a cashier at Aldrich’s, said he’s sad about the closure and that every day many people ask him how they can help, but he knows there really is no way.
Scott Rogers said he is concerned how the employees will land on their feet at a time of significant unemployment. He said it is especially hard as many employees previously worked in the restaurant industry in town, which has seen hundreds laid off and sent home to wait out the storm.
“If anybody could have saved it,” Hobar said, “it would have been Scott and Robin.”
In the end, the business was also having some issues with supply and selling certain products. The suppliers available to them were all bought out by one company, leaving them with no options to bring in certain goods and extending the time between restocks.
Rogers said he will have to re-enter the job market to pay off the debts incurred while owning the store. Someone could buy the business, but they would face the same challenges, he said.
“If we are able to get out of some of this debt before the end of this and someone wants it, they could have it,” he said.
HISTORY
Aldrich's Market has operated in Port Townsend for 125 years. It is the oldest grocery store in Washington state still operating under the same trade name.
It was opened in 1896 by Clark Aldrich and moved location several times, being destroyed by fire for the first time in 1900, before settling into the I.O.G.T. building at 940 Lawrence St. in 1927.
Seventy-six years later, and after changing hands twice, that building would be destroyed in the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 2003, during Port Townsend’s worst modern structure fire.
It was rebuilt and reopened two years later by business partners David Hamilton and Jonathon Ryweck, who then sold it in 2006.
The community was greatly impacted when the business was closed for two years, and Aldrich’s has largely been celebrated as the cultural center of Port Townsend’s Uptown neighborhood, serving as a community gathering place where people stayed connected to their friends and neighbors.
At the time of restoration, a community council of long-time residents was formed to help rebuild.
“We’ve come to realize that we weren’t the owners of Aldrich’s,” Hamilton told The Leader at the time. “We were the custodians.”
“Aldrich’s has been a community cornerstone for generations, that burned to the ground and rose from the ashes. It has been celebrated in stories, poetry and song. It has a rich history, and most locals have their favorite Aldrich’s story,” the Rogerses wrote in their April 8 announcement.
