The battle for control of the chain is playing out between two cousins, both named Arthur Demoulas. Today the story is very successful, earning more than $4 billion in revenue last year.īut workers in its stores, many of whom are immigrants, are actively encouraging loyal customers not to shop there. It's not a labor protest, though - it's aimed at reinstating the chain's CEO. It started in 1916 when Athansios 'Arthur' Demoulas, a Greek immigrant, opened the first store in Lowell, Mass., to sell fresh lamb - a hard-to-find ingredient for Greek immigrants at the time. The first thing to know is that Market Basket is a family-owned chain. And right now, the chain is in disarray. Workers at its stores are conducting a massive protest - but why? Market Basket, a chain of 71 grocery stores across New England, is like a super-sized bodega: low prices and ingredients that run the gamut from cereal to tomatillos to spices you might not come across in any other grocery store. It's so quiet, you can hear the eerie hum of refrigerator cases. 'We don't have a carrot, not a piece of watermelon - we have nothing to sell.' There are only a couple of shoppers in the store. 'We don't have a potato in the building,' says Michael Dunleavy, the store's director.

I had gone to my neighborhood grocery store to buy a carrot, but what I found were empty shelves and a produce section devoid of all produce. More than a week later, nothing has changed. The scene at the Market Basket in Somerville, Mass., was like something out of Cold War-era Russia.

Market basket somerville