After abruptly closing its locations in late April, the national coffee chain Foxtrot Market has announced plans to reopen.
The reversal comes over a month after videos taken by Foxtrot employees reacting to notice that their stores were to close imminently despite still having customers inside went viral, as previously covered in The Dallas Express.
This week, Mike LaVitola, the original co-founder of Foxtrot, told The Dallas Morning News that he plans to eventually reopen 12 to 16 of the 33 shuttered Foxtrot locations in Chicago, Austin, and the Dallas area.
LaVitola explained that he had found out about Foxtrot’s closure at the same time as the rest of the world.
“It was certainly a shock,” he told DMN. “The suddenness of it all was just really hard to conceive.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a business merger with Dom’s Kitchen & Market forged late last year had taken LaVitola and co-founder Taylor Bloom out of the driver’s seat.
In compliance with the deal, LaVitola and Bloom handed over the reins of Foxtrot, which they had launched in 2014, to Outfox Hospitality. They maintained advisor and board roles within the organization but were no longer involved with day-to-day planning.
Following the closures in April, Foxtrot Market’s assets were sold for $2.2 million during an online foreclosure sale to Further Point Enterprises. LaVitola was named executive chairman of the enterprise, and it is now the new parent company of Foxtrot.
A post on the official Foxtrot Instagram account hinted at a return on June 5: “A new Foxtrot with some old friends. Coming soon.”
“Look, I mean, Foxtrot was the only thing I thought about for almost 10 years,” LaVitola told DMN. “Stepping away from that and throwing your hands up just wasn’t the right thing to do.”
Landlords have reportedly struggled with the decision to go back into business with Foxtrot following such a sudden closure. As such, LaVitola isn’t positive about when or where the new Foxtrot locations will be reopened. However, he expects storefronts to open up in select cities — including Dallas — as early as August 2024.