BY MARY REINHOLZ | The Met Food supermarket at 180 Third Ave. in Gramercy was long known to budget-conscious locals for its cramped aisles, wide selection of beers and low prices on edibles ranging from fruits and vegetables to T-bone steaks.
On April 19 the franchise abruptly went out of business with three years left on its five-year lease. They were unable to sustain more than $50,000 in monthly rent and other costs, according to James Falzon, one of the store’s four independent owners.
“There was a drop in business and we were paying over $50,000 for about 5,500 square feet, plus additional taxes to the landlord and to the city,” Falzon said. “We’ve been subsidizing the store for two years. We had hoped things would get better and we wanted a longer lease to renovate the store.”
Falzon noted that the landlord, Sol Goldman Investments, one of the largest real estate companies in the U.S., offered an extension on the lease. But it was “too little, too late. The expenses were unsustainable,” Falzon said.
The grocery’s closing put at least 30 people out of work and tore a hole in the hearts and pocketbooks of a gentrified Downtown neighborhood — especially among its senior citizens, who had come to depend on the decidedly funky store for bargains and free deliveries.
“It didn’t always seem clean, but it was so convenient,” said Bernice Schatz, a rail-thin octogenarian who lives a block north in a co-op high-rise on Third Ave. and E. 18th St. “It seemed like it had been here forever — at least 15 years.”
Others in her age group voiced similar sentiments about an affordable grocer near a bus stop where they could come in and buy things like two fresh ears of corn for a dollar, five boxes of pasta on sale for $5 and rolls of White Rose paper towels for 79 cents each.
“This is a sad loss for me,” said an 83-year-old artist who lives in a fifth-floor rent-regulated walk-up apartment on E. 17th St. near Irving Place. “It was only a block away and now we have to walk several blocks to Food Emporium,” at 10 Union Square East.
The artist, who asked to remain anonymous, wondered hopefully if another supermarket would take the place of her shuttered mainstay, even while admitting she didn’t expect that a newcomer would offer similar deals.
Glen Bruno, another co-owner of the Met Food franchise, who was clearing out trash at the nearly vacant store on Sat., April 25, said it was more likely that a bank or a pharmacy would come in to replace it.
“I think our niche killed us,” he said, noting that the grocery’s prices “may have been too low for the neighborhood.”
Bruno said agents for Sol Goldman, the privately owned company that manages the assets of the late real estate tycoon of the same name, had asked for a rent increase two years ago from $42 per square foot to $100 for the commercial space below one of its residential buildings.
“And they wouldn’t even agree to fix the hole in the ceiling,” he recalled indignantly of the negotiations.
A colleague of Brett Weinblatt, the Sol Goldman broker in charge of commercial leases, said tersely, “We’re not going to comment on anything like that.”
A sign plastered on the Met Food store window thanks customers for their patronage and urges them to shop at the Associated supermarket in Stuyvesant Town — another franchise that Bruno and Falzon operate with their partners — at 409 E. 14th St. between First Ave. and Avenue A. That store is much larger and also offers free deliveries to customers. Several employees who lost their jobs when Met Food closed have found work there.
Bruno said his team was “looking for something” for Jose Sera, who had been the main manager at the Third Ave. Met Food store, and noted that the partners would “hire back as needed” other employees now out of work when openings become available. The partners own a total of three Associated supermarkets, each run as separate corporations. The two others are at 342 E. Eighth St. at Avenue C in the East Village; and at 255 W. 14th St. and Eighth Ave. in Chelsea.
An elderly Muslim woman paused to peer mournfully into the store’s windows on the Monday after it closed.
“I live on 27th St. and I came here because they had more of everything,” she said softly. “They were better than anyone else.”
