Both O’Brien’s Market stores in Modesto will close in late September, the company confirmed Tuesday, putting 117 employees out of work and saddening thousands of loyal customers.
The longtime family-owned stores in Roseburg Square and on Dale Road will close “due to the retirement of founder and president Chuck O’Brien,” the company said in a release.
“The O’Briens are very grateful for the support of family, friends and the community over the past 49 years and would like to dignify those relationships with details and sincerity,” the release says. “Farewells are always challenging, the O’Briens are doing everything possible to make this goodbye a positive memory for all concerned.”
Outside the O’Brien’s at 4120 Dale Road on Tuesday morning, company Vice President Bill O’Brien, Chuck O’Brien’s son, declined to discuss the closures for reasons related to employee notification. The company issued the release that afternoon.
The Roseburg Square store is scheduled to close Sept. 26 and the Dale Road store on Sept. 27, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice posted late in the day July 27.
All 50 Roseburg store employees and 67 at the Dale Road store are subject to layoff in the company’s “closure permanent” WARN posting.
A notice given to Roseburg employees, obtained by The Modesto Focus, leaves open the possibility of workers being rehired by another unnamed store operator if its negotiations with O’Brien’s succeed. Whether that applies to the Dale Road store could not be immediately determined.
“If a sale is completed before (Sept. 27) and affected employees are offered continued employment by the purchaser without an interruption in employment, they may not experience an employment loss,” reads the Roseburg notice.
Also at the Dale Road store Tuesday, Richard O’Brien – Chuck O’Brien’s brother – said a previous report listing Richard as retired from the company is inaccurate. He refused to elaborate.
Nostalgia and fond farewells for O’Brien’s stores
Modesto Focus readers posted more than 200 Facebook comments on a July 27 report, including, “Thank you for the years of wonderful service and memories.”
Another said, “Not only our neighborhood store but our FAVORITE store. We love the employees. My son has grown up going in there and gets hugs and stickers from the managers.”
The closure of O’Brien’s Markets marks the end of an era for another longtime Valley-owned and -operated business.
It follows in the footsteps of Valley-born companies like Save Mart Supermarkets which in 2022 sold to a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, ending local ownership, and Foster Farms which later that same year sold to Connecticut-based private equity firm Atlas Holdings.
Save Mart Companies has since been sold to the Vancouver-based holding company the Jim Pattison Group.
Some of the Modesto-area’s remaining locally owned major companies include E.&J. Gallo Winery and Pacific Southwest Container.
O’Brien’s Market Timeline
1978 – Chuck O’Brien, a former employee of Angelo’s Market, buys the store at Orangeburg and Ardmor avenues and it becomes the first O’Brien’s Market.
1987 – That first store moves to Roseburg Square, a shopping center that opened in 1956 and previously featured several exotic animals in a small zoo.
1994 – An O’Brien’s opens at 6331 Oakdale Road in Riverbank.
2002 – An O’Brien’s opens in the Dale Road strip mall with a McDonald’s on the corner and several other businesses including a car wash and Las Casuelas restaurant.
2024 – The Riverbank O’Brien’s closes. It becomes a Cost Less store.
2026 – Both remaining Modesto O’Brien’s stores announce they will close in late September.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact him at garth@themodestofocus.org.