Two ACME stores in our area are set to close. NBC10’s Randy Gyllenhaal takes a look at the potential impact on our area.
Two ACME supermarkets in our area are set to close next month.
Officials announced the ACME store on West Butler Avenue in Chalfont, Pennsylvania as well as the store on East Street Road in Warminster, Pennsylvania will close Nov. 13.
“All of our stores go through a pretty extensive quarterly review process,” said Angie Perez, a spokeswoman for ACME. “At these particular two locations we were not meeting our company’s goals. We made a decision to shift our resources to other areas.”
About 130 employees in all work in both stores, according to Perez.
“We are confident that we can place them in other stores nearby,” she said.
Wendell Young, president of local 1776, told NBC10 the majority of the impacted workers are members of his union.
“There are 58 union employees in Warminster and 55 in Chalfont,” Young said. “There are also about a dozen UFCW local 152 members.”
According to Young, members of his union will be able to transfer to other ACME stores though he’s unsure about the local 152 workers.
“That’s not necessarily the greatest thing because it puts pressure on the schedules in those stores,” Young said. “But in terms of their jobs, they all have the rights to transfer to other jobs. January, February and March is when people are going to feel it the most. Some people will be really affected. For some people it’s a quality of life issue. They’ll have to work weekends or lose seniority.”
Perez told NBC10 officials don’t plan on closing other locations in the near future.
“In fact it’s just the opposite,” Perez said. “We have opened up beer cafes called the Frosted Mug in two ACME stores, one in Flourtown and one at 19th Street and Oregon Avenue. These are the first two stores we have been able to sell beer out of and a lot of that is because we had to extensively renovate it.”
Perez also said ACME officials are “investing very heavily" in a store in Beach Haven, New Jersey.
“We are in the process of building a store there that will be 83 percent larger,” she said.
