Capecodonline.com – Loading her car with groceries Monday afternoon outside Market Basket, East Falmouth resident Silvia Carnevali had an unexpected trip to take.
“I am going right to Stop & Shop,” Carnevali said as she left the store with her 9-year-old son and his friend.
Carnevali hoped to buy her produce at the Market Basket, which she shops at about once a week. But with large parts of the fruit and vegetable sections empty or diminished, Carnevali said she was forced to go elsewhere for her produce.
The East Falmouth woman said she hadn’t heard about the corporate and family drama at Market Basket when she showed up to shop Monday. She asked a cashier about the lack of products and said she was told staff did not know when the supplies would be replenished.
“The store is kind of a mess,” she said.
The shortages have been caused by an ongoing feud within the family that owns the grocery chain, and employees’ efforts to try to force the return of a popular CEO who was ousted last month.
Thousands of employees and supporters rallied Monday at the company’s headquarters Tewksbury, calling for Arthur T. Demoulas to be reinstated as CEO. It was the second such rally in less than a week.
Let me get this straight. Market Basket, a chain of 71 stores, fired their CEO and now the store on Cape Cod is out of zucchini and broccoli? How does that make any sense whatsoever? Was part of Arthur T. Demoulas’ responsibilities as CEO to personally deliver produce to the Sagamore store?
No wonder there are rallies being held to put the guy back in charge. Whoever they replaced him with must be a grade A asshole. I’m not a supermarket expert by any stretch, but I’m pretty sure if your CEO sucks so bad that people can’t buy fruit at your stores anymore, it might be time to re think your hiring process.
P.S. I have to confess I’ve never been to a Market Basket. I always got the feeling it was like an Ocean State Job Lot for groceries, like they sell mac and cheese that survived a warehouse fire and shit. Am I wrong on that? Is the place a legit grocery store for normal people?
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It's legit – until they ran out of produce!
REAL Cape Codders shop at Job lot!
Market Basket is a legit grocery store with great prices. And…the family that owns it is from MA. It is crowded as fuck…but it is local so that makes it worth it in my mind. They hired CEOs aka assholes who then ousted the man who has been running it, a family member, for years. They stopped the growth of the company and rumor is that they are planning to make it super profitable and sell it off. Douchecanoes. 🙁 The employees are protesting to get the original family members back in charge. Therefore…I wont shop there till that happens. And thats ok….cause they are out of produce! 🙂
The family is internally fighting over profits and they forced out standing CEO Arthur T. Demoulas. Arthur S. Demoulas, his cousin, took over and gutted the employee profit sharing and raised prices to better line his pocket. The warehouses thought that this would be an opportune time to strike to save the old CEO. Meanwhile the stores are empty and the store management and warehouse management are getting pink slip after pink slip to try to scare more employees into going back to work.
http://bit.ly/1qWV6j2
It's a legit supermarket. Your thinking of Price Chopper with the leftover surplus goods from flood zones. Every time my girl brought me to MB in Sagamore I couldn't believe the crowds. It was if it was black Friday at Walmart after thanksgiving. That was during the off hours too. Meanwhile at Stop &Shop a few miles down the street you could Rollerblade in the isles and not hit anyone. Prices are good and the same selection as any other supermarket(if not better). I'm not exactly sure of all the business politics going on behind the scenes but apparently the workers love the ousted CEO very much. When is the last time you heard of workers getting all tear eyed over a CEO?
They're refusing to restock to protest the firing of Arthur T. Demoulas, the new CEO only cares about the shareholders and is looking to get rid of profit sharing, employee benefits, and is also joined by a new group of cronies- one is the ex-CEO of Radio Shack, which we all know did so well. The employees are striking, refusing to re-order, etc., all in protest.
As for the quality of the store, some of the older MBs near Boston are rundown, but ours is one of the new ones and it's far nicer than any of the Stop and Shops or Shaws on the Cape, which are all starting to look grimy and horribly dated, not to mention their price gouging. This one has a really nice cafe, pizza/sub stand, sandwich deli, and a big area to eat it all in. At MB I can purchase fresh produce, organic foods and produce, fresh cuts of meat, brand name snacks, etc. for less money. And that includes the gas $ I spend to get there and back from Harwich. Their store brand stuff is mostly all from local farms and vendors (ie the coffee is actually from Raos coffee in Amherst, MA), it's high quality, and it's not (at least for now) another big, hulking, grocery store conglomerate.