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Food

Berkeley's Market Hall Foods Is Closing After 28 Years

The locally-adored Fourth St. market is unexpectedly shuttering due to post-COVID challenges.
Alan Chazaro
Bustling aisles inside a grocery store.
Berkeley's Market Hall Foods has been open since 1996. It will close in May. (Courtesy of Visit Berkeley and Market Hall Foods)

Anyone who has ever perused the quaint aisles of specialty cheeses, imported pastas, organic jams and much more at Market Hall Foods on Fourth Street in Berkeley will be saddened to hear that the 28-year specialty grocer will be shuttering next month. Market Hall’s flagship location in Rockridge will remain open.

Open since 1996, the upscale shop (formerly known as The Pasta Shop) has always been the kind of place where you’d run into local chefs stocking up on hard-to-find goods — a reliable little market where you could pop by for a quality lunch on the go. It’s also been a cornerstone for locally-sourced ingredients and high-quality products long before it became a national trend.

The market’s Berkeley location is slated for its final day on Sunday, May 26 (Memorial Day weekend). Customers will be able to continue shopping there for the next few weeks. After that, there won’t be any remaining grocery options in the Fourth Street shopping district proper, though a Trader Joe’s, a Whole Foods and Berkeley Bowl West all continue to operate nearby.

In a heartfelt public letter released earlier today, co-owner Sara E. Wilson — who founded the original shop in Oakland in 1987 with her two brothers, Tony and Peter — stated a variety of post-COVID economic factors that has led to the difficult decision. “We recognize that this closure is the best way to ensure the strength of our overall business,” she says.

It’s the latest in an ongoing slew of small, local businesses having to unexpectedly pivot — either by downsizing or closing completely — due to various cost factors in an ever-expensive Bay Area economy.

“Like many other retailers and food establishments, we have been experiencing new challenges post-COVID… with more people working from home, we could no longer rely on those customers.”

In addition to serving fewer customers than in the past, the letter also references how remaining customers ”have become more cautious with their spending and are buying fewer items.” They make clear that the building owners did not raise rent or anything of the sort, instead citing “shifts in customer patterns” as an unscalable financial barrier.

Exterior facade of a specialty grocery store. The sign reads, "Market Hall Foods on 4th."
The shop’s final day of business will be May 26. (Courtesy of Market Hall Foods)

Wilson also cited how it has been challenging for the company “to cover increased wage and benefit costs” — a reference, perhaps, to the City of Berkeley’s recent increase of its minimum wage to $20 per hour.

Fortunately, the market’s sister location in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood will continue to operate. In her letter, Wilson notes that because the Rockridge location is centralized in a residential area, it has been able to better endure the challenges of a difficult economy.

Of the 48 employees — kitchen, bakery and retail — who will be affected by the closure, some will be transferring to the Oakland location, while others will receive severance packages. They were informed on April 30.

For its final weekend in Berkeley, Market Hall Foods will host a “closing celebration,” with more details to be announced shortly.

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