Like its name, Foxtrot’s return from bankruptcy has been a slow dance.
The upscale Chicago-based convenience store and cafe chain that abruptly closed in the spring is reopening its third location in Wicker Park this week as it gradually reestablishes its retail footprint under new ownership.
The Foxtrot store at 1722 W. Division St. will welcome back customers Thursday with free coffee from 6 to 10 a.m., a refreshed lineup of food offerings and a healthier company balance sheet.
Mike LaVitola, Foxtrot’s co-founder and chairman, said 10 to 12 stores are on track to reopen by spring — about a third of the previous locations — with promising early returns since relaunching the downsized chain in September.
“The stores are full, which is always exciting,” LaVitola said Tuesday. “Sales there have been materially higher than they were even before.”
Founded in 2014, Foxtrot imploded following a merger with Dom’s Kitchen & Market, another Chicago grocery startup, under the Outfox corporate banner. The combined chain shuttered in April, locking out customers and employees with no advance warning.
In May, Outfox filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a Delaware court, and the assets of Foxtrot were purchased at auction for $2.2 million by Further Point Enterprises, an early investor in the startup. The new owners reinstalled LaVitola, who had been ousted as CEO in 2023, with plans to relaunch the brand.
Foxtrot had grown to 33 locations, including 15 in Chicago, with the rest in Texas and Washington, D.C., when it shut down. The new Foxtrot, which reopened its first stores in the Gold Coast and Old Town last month, is thinking smaller, at least initially.
LaVitola said the company expects to reopen up to a dozen former locations by spring in Chicago and Texas. The slow but steady rollout — bringing back some stores a year after they closed — is part of the plan, he said.
“I think it’s way more about when the doors do open to have that experience be dialed in … the right food and the right products and the right team,” LaVitola said. “I’m not so worried about the time passage. I’m way more focused on just making sure when the doors do open, it’s the exact experience that we want to deliver.”
Each store has about 30 employees. Foxtrot is hiring back former managers to lead the stores, while the rest of the staff is a mix of old and new employees, LaVitola said.
In addition to its signature breakfast tacos and specialty coffees, the new Foxtrot lunch menu features items such as panini sandwiches and salad bowls. Foxtrot also offers a variety of locally sourced products that aren’t typically found in traditional convenience stores, the core concept LaVitola developed a decade ago while pursuing his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“If you look at what customers are actually buying, it is really doubling down on all the local makers and some of these new, interesting, smaller brands,” he said. ”The other big change has just been how much the coffee and cafe side of our business has grown.”
Last week, Foxtrot relaunched its app, enabling digital orders for pickup and one-hour delivery, a service that exploded during the pandemic, in part fueling the overly aggressive expansion and ill-fated merger that ultimately sank the chain.
Getting it back online is nonetheless another step in the process of returning Foxtrot to the stuff of daily routine and winning back its customers in Chicago, LaVitola said.
“It’s definitely an important part of the business for us,” he said. “Most of our customers shop both in store and online, so it was great to get it back.”
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
