Some Pacific Market Employees Stunned About Sudden Closure, Some Saw it Coming

Wendy Hutchens is one of 40 employees who got the news Saturday night that she no longer had a job at  the following morning.

“We’d all been wondering what was going on, if we were closing or not,” Hutchens said.

The writing was on the wall, she said. The store hadn’t received a food shipment for two weeks. Superbowl Sunday was the last day she remembered getting a delivery. Employees the week before closure filled six shopping carts with perishables to send to local food banks, and vendors with trucks to unload were being sent away a week before the doors were shut for good.

“Coke vendors came on Friday; bread and chip deliveries came, dairy — we sent them all away,” Hutchens said. “We said we weren’t accepting deliveries at this time, and when we asked management what was going on, they’d say they made a mistake and over ordered or something.”

Hutchens said she loves the company, and she loves her customers, but she feels betrayed. 

“It feels like such a betrayal of trust. Customers on Friday were asking what was going on with the store, and we had to tell them we didn’t know, because we truly didn’t,” she said. “I had 281 customers on Friday, and I’d say at least 160 of them asked if we were closing. Some of them even got angry, and demanded to know.”

“We didn’t even know ourselves, and we worked there,” she said.

“Management had a big meeting the Friday before we closed, and we expected Chet [Strech, store manager] to come back and tell us something, but he told us not to worry. Then he posted the schedule for the next week, and we were all excited that we had more hours than we’d had in a while.”

It’s not that Hutchins didn’t know something was up. In fact, said Anisia Robinson, who opened the store as Roger Wilco 26 years ago, it was impossible not to suspect something,

“I’d never seen the shelves so empty,” Robinson said. “I understand why they had to do it, but it doesn’t take the sting out of it.”

It was the suddenness to it all, Hutchens said.

“I was surprised they didn’t give us any type of warning. It’s almost the first of the month, rent and bills are due, and unemployment payments aren’t coming until March,” Hutchens said.

Ken Silveira, co-owner of the grocery store, said he’s keeping 11 of about 50 total employees and transferring most to the Sebastopol location.

“We’ve been open four years; we thought there was a niche in Rohnert Park that could be filled,” Silveira said. “We were looking forward to a little more growth here; new housing was scheduled to come in four years ago.”

Robinson is one of the 11 employees who Pacific Market is keeping.

“I started as a checker in 1985, and when Pacific Market came in, they offered me the job of CCL — Creating Customers for Life,” Robinson said. “This is a family-owned business, and they’ve been very good to me. I was a name, not just a number.”

Robinson said it was the economy that killed the store.

“We had such high hopes. I cry every day, it is devastating,” Robinson said.

Both Hutchins and Robinson said the thing they’ll miss about the store the most is the customers.

“People waited in my line for me, I wish I could have exchanged phone numbers, or even just said goodbye,” Hutchens said.

As for Robinson, neighbors, friends and old customers are there for her. Her neighbor brought flowers to her home the other day.

“I was doing good that day, I hadn’t cried at all, but then I broke down when my neighbor came,” she said.

Robinson said her bosses offered her some emotional time off, but she wouldn’t have it. She’s working regular hours now, cleaning up the store, packing up the food to transfer over to the Sebastopol or Santa Rosa locations.

“They asked me if I needed time off, and I said no,” Robinson said. “I opened this store and I’m going to close it.”

“This is a very sad day for our corporation, our family has been in the grocery business for four generations,” Silveira said.