Alfalfa’s Market to shutter Louisville store, marking end to almost 40 years in business

This story has been updated.

LOUISVILLE — Alfalfa’s Market Inc. will close its lone store in Louisville this week, marking the end of one of the original natural-foods grocers in the Boulder area and a swift collapse of the brand in recent weeks.

In a post on Facebook, the market said it will hold a final inventory sale at the store at 785 E. South Boulder Road on Thursday before closing for good. It blamed the pandemic as the main driver of its woes.

In a further statement to BizWest, the company said it was optimistic it could turn itself around after a new ownership group took over in 2018.

“Unfortunately, the challenges of this last year, coupled with existing weakness in the company’s financial health, leave us no choice but to dissolve the company,” the company said.

Alfalfa’s management declined an interview request Wednesday evening.

The store’s closure puts an end to a little over a month and a half of the brand’s struggles coming to light. It closed its longtime Boulder store in late February, with company president Mark Homlish saying at the time that the Longmont and Louisville stores would remain open.

Weeks later, the Longmont store was shuttered just more than five months after it was opened.

As those stores were closing, BizWest obtained internal documents showing that the company owed hundreds of vendors at least $4.1 million as of mid-March, with half of that more than 90 days past due, calling into question the company’s ability to get enough day-to-day cash flow to stay operational.

Public disclosures of the company’s debts continued to emerge last week after a judge ordered the company and co-founder and former CEO Mark Retzloff to pay $1.4 million on a defaulted $5 million credit line used to open the Louisville store.

While the company said it’s dissolving, it’s unclear if it intends to file bankruptcy, or if it has another plan to manage its obligations without any major sources of revenue remaining.

© 2021 BizWest Media LLC

on Facebook on LinkedIn