WILMINGTON — Earth Fare will soon close all of its stores, the Asheville-based company confirmed Monday.
The company opened its 48th store in Wilmington November 2018, a 22,700-square-foot anchor tenant in the new shopping center across from Mayfaire, Renaissance Market.
When the specialty natural and organic-focused chain opened, it touted bringing 100 new jobs to the Wilmington market.
Inventory liquidation sales at all of Earth Fare’s stores begin Monday. In a release, the company attributed its demise to recent growth and expansion initiatives in recent years.
“While many of these initiatives improved the business, continued challenges in the retail industry impeded the company’s progress as well as its ability to refinance its debt. As a result, Earth Fare is not in a financial position to continue to operate on a go-forward basis. As such, we have made the difficult, but necessary decision to commence inventory liquidation sales while we continue to engage in a process to find potential suitors for our stores,” the company’s release states.
In 1975, Earth Fare opened its first store in Asheville, North Carolina. The Military Cutoff location was the company’s 11th in the state.