UNIONTOWN, Pa. — A grocery store in Fayette County was closed last week when the landlord had sheriff’s deputies put locks on the door.
When the owners of the building went inside, they found expired food on the shelves and rotting meat in the cooler.
The abrupt closure of Save Well grocery store last week happened because the store had not been paying rent to the building’s owner.
“When they became delinquent for, in the end, four months, which is $8,000 a month, $32,000 dollars, I filed suit, had them ejected, got a $97,000 judgment against them, had the sheriffs come and padlock the building, and had them escorted out the door,” said attorney Thomas Shaffer.
When the landlords went inside, they were hit with an awful smell.
“All the meat was spoiled,” said Rishabh Patel. “The red meat and the green, all the meat had mold.”
In fact – a lot of the products on the shelves still today are expired.
Channel 11 found expiration dates on products showing August, September, and December of 2023. The landlords estimate there were tens of thousands of dollars of expired food on the shelves before they started throwing things away.
Patel told Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek they even found fake stickers on some products with bogus expiration dates.
“I am not surprised,” said Joyce Palya, a former Save Well shopper.
It’s how some former shoppers are reacting to the news.
The store had only been open for a year. It was previously Adrian’s Market and Foodland.
“I went down there to buy some ground meat, and every package of meat was brown except for one small package,” said Judy Halo, another former shopper.
The building’s owners say they’ve hired a company to help clean and have thrown out 8 dumpsters of bad food so far.
They found an expired food facility license and court documents showing the store’s management owed their grocery suppliers more than $400,000.
“I’m happy we kicked them out,” Patel said. “We don’t want service like this in the community of Hopwood.”
Channel 11 called the manager of the former store. He did not return our call.
“I can’t wait till we get another store here,” Halo said.
The landlords tell Channel 11 they hope to get a new grocery store in the building soon.
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