What Will Happen With The Closed Bottom Dollar Food Stores?

The Bottom Dollar Food stores in Bristol Township and Penndel have now closed.

Signs announcing the closure were posted on the doors Sunday.

On Monday afternoon, onlookers streamed in and out of the parking lot throughout the afternoon, all turned away by the signs and paper-covered windows.

Bottom Dollar Food store officials said the locations ended operations before their planned Thursday closure due to lack of inventory. Clearance sales started at the grocery locations last week.

The $15 million transaction to sell Bottom Dollar Food’s 66 store locations and associated lease liabilities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio to Aldi should close by the end of the first quarter.

Bottom Dollar owns the 18,000-square-foot store at the intersection of Edgely Road and Mill Creek Parkway in Bristol Township’s Levittown section. The Penndel store, which is on Bellevue Avenue, is leased.

Plans for the future of the two stores have not been announced yet.

“It would be premature to share any plans specific to the purchase of these real estate assets at this time,” an Aldi official said in a response to SauconSource.com. “We anticipate the sale will close by the end of March 2015, and, after that occurs and we have finalized our plans, we will communicate them as appropriate.”

All Bottom Dollar employees will be offered severance and some will be eligible for “career transition services” through the company, SuperMarketNews.com reported.

Bristol Township officials said last month that they would work to make sure the Bottom Dollar location in their town does not sit empty to long.

When the Bottom Dollar Food store held a job fair in Bristol Township in August 2013, hundreds of applicants came out to apply for the roughly 50 part- and full-time positions.

Last month, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) sent a letter to Aldi President Jason Hart. The letter asks Hart to protect the 1,600 jobs that would be lost when the stores close.