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Nonprofit grocery chain Daily Table to shut down operations
The CEO cited loss of federal funding and higher cost of food as causing financial instability.
Daily Table, a nonprofit grocery chain known for its affordable, healthy food, announced Friday it will close all its stores, citing rising food costs and the loss of federal funding as making its mission financially unsustainable.
“It was not a decision we wanted to make,” Sasha Purpura, Daily Table’s CEO, said in a call to Boston.com. “But we had no choice. It was an economic decision.”
Daily Table has four locations in Cambridge’s Central Square, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Salem. A fifth location in Mattapan closed last year after two years in operation.
Ten years ago, a former Trader Joe’s president founded Daily Table to make nutritious food affordable by bridging the gap between food banks and traditional grocery stores with SNAP-eligible items like fresh produce, staples, and prepared meals.
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In a letter to community members, Daily Table said it has served over 3 million customers while returning over $16 million in savings to the community.
The stores will sell off inventory over the next few days at a discounted price until they cease operations.
“We are deeply grateful to every person, and organization, who has supported our mission since 2015 — donors, suppliers, customers, volunteers, and community partners,” the Daily Table Board of Directors’ letter said. “Your belief in the power of dignity, health, and access has enabled us to impact hundreds of thousands of lives.”
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Purpura said its economic woes began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when customers dropped off at its locations, like most brick-and-mortar stores.
Purpura said Daily Table chose to retain its staff during a critical time for supporting local communities — an effort that ultimately came at a significant financial cost to the organization.
As the cost of food continued to rise to unprecedented levels, Purpura said the nonprofit’s mission to provide nutritional food without passing the cost on to customers continued to create a larger demand on its finances.
Then, Daily Table lost its USDA aid last fall through the Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program, which provided SNAP customers a 50% discount on fresh produce purchases and half off nonfat and 1% milk.
Purpura said support from Cambridge and Boston helped fill the gap, but it wasn’t enough.
Purpura said store sales provided three-quarters of the money needed to run the operation, with the rest coming from philanthropy and government funding.
“We have been trying to get through this challenging time, but in the end, we do not have the money,” she said. “It has been heart-wrenching for all of us.”
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Purpura hopes other organizations will step up. But she says, “I don’t know of other Daily Tables out there.”
“This is going to create a hole in the communities at a time when there are a lot of stressors for the people we are serving,” she said.
According to its annual report, Daily Table served over 260,000 residents across its stores in 2024, a 24% increase from the previous year.
However, even though Daily Table is closing for now, Purpura believes another version may be possible.
“I can’t believe this is the end,” she said. While this version of the model didn’t survive, she said it offered valuable lessons — and she hopes that five years from now, she’ll be able to look back and say, “It was the beginning of something.”
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