A Virginia supermarket is being forced to shut down after nearly 25 years, citing a crippling $ 25K-a-month utility bill.
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Grants Supermarket's Richlands location is set to shutter on Oct. 10, according to The New York Post. The company decided to let the lease expire rather than renew it due to the overwhelming overhead of running the location, which serves the small town of just over 5,000 people.
"Our lease on the Richlands location will be expiring soon. At the same time, we have faced dramatically rising operating costs," the company explained in a statement via local outlet SWVA Today. "Like many families and businesses throughout our community, we have struggled with increasing utility expenses."
"Over the past two years, the utility bill for this location alone has averaged more than $25,000 per month. With the lease nearing its end, these continuing costs made the difficult decision not to renew unavoidable," the press release contined.
"Closing a store after nearly a quarter century is never easy. We leave with tremendous gratitude for the relationships, friendships, and memories that have been created here," Grants Supermarket added.
The Grant Supermarket Location Shutting Down Follows a Surge in Utility Prices
The supermarket shutting down follows a surge in inflation, The Post points out. The outlet reports that electricity prices have skyrocketed 35.3% since 2021. Piped natural gas prices also jumped 61.8% this past decade.
Meanwhile, prices for consumers spiked 39.1% over the past ten years.
However, Grants Supermarket didn't directly blame rising utility rates for its decision to shut down the Richland location.
"This is an incredibly difficult decision and one we did not make lightly," the company wrote after citing the overall fiscal burden of the keeping the store open just not making fiscal sense.
The Richland location closing follows the company shuttering its Tazewell, Virginia location just two years ago, per SWVA Today. The only remaining Grant Supermarket locations in nearby areas include Bluefield, Virginia, and Smithers, Princeton, and Oak Hill in West Virginia.
The Richland location's final day of operation will be Saturday.
They have rooked me on their 'buy 2 and get 1 free' often. I always check, then go challenge them...
I suppose anything is possible. With hundreds of stores in varying unique markets, all with thousands of products stocked and constantly re-stocked day and night, and grocery stores wholesale cost in constant flux, and about 100 sale items changing weekly, and then factor in the thousands of customers daily (hourly) and those thousands upon thousands of transactions each minute (each second) and much more in the realm of things that can go wrong but must go right (I could go on with more things, but I won't.) And all of it subject to computer glitches, and human error, and who knows what...Well, mistakes are going to happen. Mistakes. Any high volume business is subject to this. But the systematic, by design, completely intentional practice of outright cheating of customers as a means to make a profit is virtually unheard of. Because it would be stupid. A recipe for disaster. So...I don't buy this lady's story. Something is not right. I don't think Publix did this. And actually, I would say this if it was any grocery store, but especially Publix. After all, Publix has the Publix promise, and the Publix Guarantee. I don't think any other grocery chain in the U.S. has a higher level of standard customer protection and customer satisfaction policies than Publix. Publix has a guarantee that it "will never knowingly disappoint you"...If a purchase doesn't satisfy the customer, return the item for any reason, or NO REASON, and the full purchase price will be refunded. And the "Publix Promise" guarantees that if during checkout, the scanned price of an item (excluding alcohol and tobacco products) exceeds the shelf price or advertised price, Publix will give the customer one of that item free. (And will charge the lower price for any remaining items.) So, this lady should have got her $17.48 pork loin FOR FREE! And all those other items she has been overpaying were free too. All she had to do was point out the price discrepancy which would have been obvious. And also, blatant fraud. Yes, fraud...not deception, is what Koutouzis is apparently alleging. If true, the incident(s) she claims to be a victim of would be (in my opinion) criminal fraud under Florida statute 501.135. I am not a lawyer and no...I don't work for Publix. Anything is possible, I suppose. But I say...this story don't pass the smell test for me.