The Boston Globe this morning reports on the competition to acquire Super 88, the Boston-based Asian supermarket chain that has been in severe financial distress over the past few years. Three of the company’s stores have been closed, and now “three entrepreneurs are vying for ownership of the remaining three Super 88 stores. Two buyers - a local couple with 30 years in the food industry and a New Jersey businessman with an Asian market in Quincy - have each filed suit in Suffolk Superior Court to protect deals to purchase individual stores. The third potential owner, a jet-setting New Yorker with a successful Asian grocery chain of his own, claims to have bought all three Super 88 markets and has already begun to move in.”
- KC's View:
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It sounds like the founders of Super 88 have handled the sale of the company about as well as they’ve handled the running of the business in recent years. However the legal wrangling turns out, it sounds like whoever gets the company will have an opportunity to capitalize on a healthy market for ethnic foods in the Boston area…as long as they can a) compete with other ethnic chains that have opened in the area, b) rebuild consumer trust in the stores, which may be easier if the banner is changed, and c) not screw it up.
