New Fresh & Green’s Food Market Debuts in Baltimore at ex-Superfresh Site

A new grocery retailer with ambitious plans in Maryland entered the Baltimore scene quietly over the weekend, opening its first store in the state with little fanfare at the former Superfresh site on Charles Street.

Fresh & Green’s, a unit of a Toronto-based natural foods marketer and restaurant operator, opened the first of as many as eight new stores in the region on July 1, company spokesman Jon Packer confirmed.

The company intends to move quickly to open other stores, including a second Baltimore location at another ex-Superfresh site at 41st Street in Hampden, he said.

No firm date for the opening there has been set, Packer added, but notices posted at the store inform customers that the Hampden  Superfresh would close permanently on July 6.

The two Baltimore stores are among eight purchased in May by a new company called Mrs. Green’s Management Corp. as part of a bankruptcy auction by Superfresh owner Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., or A&P.

The other locations purchased for conversion into Fresh & Green’s markets are in Arnold, Brunswick, Cambridge, Chestertown, Parkville, and Washington, D.C.

At the same auction, two other ex-Superfresh stores, in Timonium and White Oak, were sold to a New Jersey supermarket company for conversion to ShopRite stores.

The purchase of the eight stores by Mrs. Green’s Management Corp. prompted speculation in the region, as the company was virtually unknown here.

Since then, it has emerged that the company is controlled by Toronto-based Natural Markets Restaurant Corp., which operates natural food stores and restaurants in Canada and the United States. It is a privately-owned corporation and does not publish annual financial statements, or other financial data.

An executive of the Toronto corporation has been quoted in other publications as saying the company intends to open “hybrid” stores that will offer some traditional groceries, natural foods and fresh prepared foods intended for home consumption. These offerings will be supplemented by an in-store restaurant focusing on natural foods, he said.

Representatives of the company have said that the new stores will be operated under a collective bargaining agreement with the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which represents most of the employees at 25 Superfresh stores slated for closure in Maryland, Delaware and DC.

About 1,500 UFCW members in Maryland have been notified by Superfresh that the company is eliminating their jobs, but only a handful of UFCW members have been offered jobs with the new owners of the stores.

Fresh & Green’s spokesman Packer said the company intended to offer positions to an undetermined number of ex-Superfresh employees, but is not guaranteeing new employment to all of the workers displaced by sales of the eight Superfresh stores.