More auctions planned for Joe Caputo & Sons grocery assets
More auctions are planned next week for the inventories of three Joe Caputo & Sons grocery stores, an auction house announced Monday.
The live and online auctions held May 24-25 include late-model bakery, meat processing and refrigeration equipment, as well as general store fixtures, from shuttered Caputo's stores in Elk Grove Village and Arlington Heights, and one that never opened in Des Plaines, according to auction firm Heath Industrial.
The auctions mark the next phase of the continuing liquidation of the company's assets, prompted by a federal lawsuit in which produce wholesalers allege they are owed some $4.6 million in unpaid produce bills.
A combination on-site and online auction for the contents of the 80,000-square-foot Elk Grove store, at 980 Elk Grove Town Center, will be held 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 24. An online-only auction is scheduled the following day at 10 a.m. at bidspotter.com for the contents of the former Arlington Heights store, which closed late last year, and what was to become a Caputo's grocery store at The Oaks Shopping Center at Oakton and Lee streets in Des Plaines.
All three locations were among four former Dominick's locations Caputo acquired in 2014. Interior renovation work began at The Oaks in Des Plaines, but the store never opened while the family-owned company worked on its other stores.
Contents of the original Caputo store, at 959 E. Oakton St. in Des Plaines, were among the assets auctioned May 12 by a separate auction house. The owners of Butera Finer Foods and Piggly Wiggly Midwest had the $32 million high bid for the currently operating stores in Des Plaines, Palatine and Algonquin. Co-owner Paul Butera said his family plans to keep the three stores open, though they might soon have a different name.
He said he eventually plans to relocate the original 10,000-square-foot Des Plaines store to The Oaks down the street.