Marsh will close remaining stores if buyer isn’t found within 60 days

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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Marsh Supermarkets will close its remaining 44 stores if the company does not find a buyer within 60 days.

The company says 2,788 employees would be impacted by the closures.

Marsh says 19 stores will close no matter what. Nine of those closures were announced last week and 10 in April.

The company has hired investment banking firm Peter J Solomon Company to assist them in finding a buyer.

The announcement comes after the company sent a WARN notice to the state identifying 16 of those stores that could shut down. The notice said Marsh Supermarkets “recently experienced a period of unexpected difficulties and increased competition resulting in poor sales performance.”

Marsh wrote that if it is “unsuccessful in its efforts, the Company will be forced to permanently close the locations” and “terminate employees at those locations in 60 days of this notice or sooner.” The notice was dated Monday, May 8.

“We would have preferred to provide this notice sooner, but the unexpected turn of events above precluded us from providing more advance notice,” the company wrote. “We deeply regret and understand the uncertainty this action will cause our valued employees and the community.”

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett released the following statement regarding the potential closures:

“This afternoon, I reached out to corporate leadership to express my concern with the announcement that they may close a number of store locations in the area. Closing all of these stores at once would leave swaths of our city without a dependable source for high-quality food, and could affect hundreds of hardworking residents. Effective immediately, I have directed city leaders to aggressively engage with the company and use all tools at our disposal to prevent and mitigate the effects of these potential decisions.”

UFCW Local 700, a union which represents over 13,000 grocery and packing-processing workers in Indiana, released the following statement encouraging Marsh to honor its employees with severance packages:

“The hard-working men and women at Marsh Supermarkets and Marsh Pharmacies have made a difference in the lives people across Indiana for over 70 years. They have provided an invaluable service that deserves to be recognized. We are calling on Marsh to honor the dedication and service of their employees by doing the right thing and making sure every Marsh employee gets a severance package. In this time of uncertainty, your employees, who are all neighbors and friends, deserve to be treated fairly and with respect.”

Here are the 16 new locations Marsh listed in the WARN notice: