Greater Chicago Food Depository trying to rescue food still sitting inside shuttered Dom's stores
Dom's vendors left in lurch after parent company Outfox Hospitality files for bankruptcy
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Time is frozen inside Dom's Kitchen & Market.
A package of meat remains on the checkout counter. Dirty dishes are on tables near the takeout area.
Days after the specialty grocery stores abruptly shut their doors without notice, the stores are full of food, including several ready to go meals, like sushi. During a time when one in four Chicago-area families are facing food insecurity, the Greater Chicago Food Depository is hoping to rescue all the food left behind.
"It is very hard for us to see when there is food left on the shelves especially at a time now when hunger is very persistent in the community," said Greater Chicago Food Depository spokesperson Man-Yee Lee.
Especially since Dom's partnered with food banks to donate surplus food, a big refrigerator remains empty at Care for Real. The Edgewater food pantry relied on Dom's for its ready-to-go meals.
The Greater Chicago Food Depository has been trying to reach the company without any luck.
"We are ready and able to mobilize quickly with urgency to collect food if we can get ahold of somebody from organization," Lee said.
The sudden closures came months after Dom's and the upscale Foxtrot convenience markets merged.
When the parent company what owns both filed for bankruptcy, Dom's vendors were also left in a lurch. A big chunk of Duneyrr Brewery's business was providing local beers to Dom's Old Town and Lincoln Park Stores.
"It was beers we made specially for them, like their house Pilsner," said Tyler Davis with Duneyrr Fermenta Winery and Brewery.
SEE ALSO | Closure of Foxtrot, Dom's markets impacting Chicago-area small businesses that supplied stores
With plenty of brewed beer ready to go, owner Tyler Davis is using it to hold a fundraiser on Saturday for the hundreds of Dom's employees who lost their jobs and were left without severance or any other benefits.
"Fifty percent of the proceeds are going to go, basically, to a fund directed at employees themselves," Davis said.
Employees have filed a class action lawsuit against Dom's and Foxtrot parent company Outfox Hospitality. The suit alleges state law requires a 60-day notice for companies that employ more than 100 people.
