Dom's Kitchen & Market and Foxtrot are facing a class action lawsuit a day after they closed their stores with little advance notice to customers and employees.
The complaint, filed Wednesday in the Northern District of Illinois, alleges the companies violated state and federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Acts by failing to properly notify employees that they were being laid off.
The Illinois Warning Law requires employers with 75 or more full-time employees to provide at least 60 days' notice of any mass layoffs or closures. The federal WARN law applies to businesses with 100 or more employees.
According to the complaint, former Foxtrot employee Jamil Moore learned that Tuesday was his last day at work “when he was fired mid-shift around 11:30 a.m.” Moore worked at Foxtrot's Old Town store, 1562 N. Wells St., and joined the company in 2021.
Said Hussein, Mr. Moore's attorney at the Chicago-based law firm Haseeb Legal, said the court's discovery process will reveal the number of employees targeted in the class action lawsuit.
The complaint estimates that 1,000 employees may be eligible to join the lawsuit, which would require court certification to proceed as a class action.
“This is very new, but we wanted to be the first to document this,” Hussain said.
He said the case could take more than a year to reach trial.
Outfox Hospitality did not respond to a request for comment.
sudden closing
On Tuesday morning, Dom's Kitchen and Foxtrot announced to customers and employees that they would be closing all of their locations in Chicago and beyond, effective immediately.
Dom's operated two stores in Chicago, 2730 N. Halsted St. and 1233 N. Wells St., and Foxtrot had 15 stores, plus 17 in Dallas, Austin, and Washington.
The Chicago-based specialty grocer announced plans to merge last year, joining under a new company called Outfox Hospitality. At the time, the companies said the merger would improve the customer experience and allow for crossover services, such as offering Foxtrot's signature dishes in Dom locations.
It's unclear if either Outfox or its brands, which had expected the merger to be completed by the end of 2023, are facing bankruptcy.
Some Dom's Kitchen and Foxtrot employees said Tuesday they learned of the store closures the same day the company announced the closures.
Rebecca Haller, who worked at Foxtrot's Wrigley Field store, said she was at the store when she received the company's email about the closure and learned as of noon that she was no longer on the grocer's payroll. But she first heard the news from her co-workers, she said.
