Lynn Foodmaster to close by end of November

LYNN – Johnnie?s Foodmaster?s Boston Street location will close by Nov. 30, and the local store is not included in Whole Foods Market?s plan to acquire leases for six other Johnnie?s stores.Lynn store manager Kevin Desmond said some of his customers have already heard about the closing.?Their first reaction is, ?It stinks,? ” said Desmond, a New Hampshire resident now contemplating the end to a 22-year career with Johnnie?s.Whole Foods Inc. has a Swampscott store and announced plans on Oct. 26 to buy leases for six Johnnie?s stores in the Greater Boston area. The nationwide chain plans to remodel the stores and open them within a year.?Lynn is not one of them. The stores we are going to be moving into are places where we have long been requested to come to those communities and where the size of the store worked for us,” said Whole Foods spokeswoman Heather McCready.McCready said she “did not have any specifics” on why Whole Foods did not include Lynn in the lease agreements.?I wouldn?t even speculate,” she said.Desmond said Johnnie?s employees will start “liquidation” work today and hang banners and signs on the front of the Boston Street store offering purchase discounts to customers.That opportunity to buy items on sale at Johnnie?s did little Thursday to diminish Nahant resident Bob Cronin?s disappointment over the closing.?I love the place. I?m going to miss it,” Cronin said.He said Johnnie?s friendly staff and quality food kept him coming back to the store for five years.?The bakery?s the best around,” he said.Jacob St. George of Lynnfield said Johnnie?s affordable prices made him a loyal customer. He said he will probably shop at Market Basket once the Boston Street store closes, but said jumping to a new grocer will be tough for him to make.?A piece of you goes missing when old places go away,” he said.Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy stated Thursday that many local Johnnie?s employees have worked in the Boston Street location “since it was a Star Market decades ago.”?It?s very sad that we are losing another local chain to a national one,” Kennedy stated.She expressed hope that Whole Foods will offer jobs to local Johnnie?s workers.Whole Foods, in its statement, noted it plans to guarantee interviews for workers at the six stores it is acquiring “?with the goal of hiring as many as possible.”McCready said there is no arrangement to offer the Lynn store?s approximately 60 employees interviews because the store is not among the six leases Whole Foods plans to acquire.Desmond said his workers include many Lynn residents.?A lot of good people work for this company,” he said.Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].