Editor’s note: Grant Welker covered the Market Basket story as a reporter at the Lowell Sun, and co-authored a book, “We Are Market Basket,” published by HarperCollins in 2015.
This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the culmination of weeks of regional protests by Market Basket workers and customers alike. The milestone is a chance to consider questions about the future of the wildly popular local grocery store chain and whether anything like those protests might ever happen again at another retailer.
In the news business, anniversaries are often for tragedies. But Market Basket’s story is different, because so many people across the region played a role in helping save one of the area’s beloved retailers, as well as Massachusetts’ fourth-largest employer.
For those who need primer on what took place a decade ago: Market Basket’s parent company, DeMoulas Super Market Inc., had been led by CEO Arthur T. Demoulas since 2008, but his tenure was dependent on a small majority margin his side of the family controlled.
In the summer of 2014, his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, led a push for Arthur T.’s dismissal for what they said was (among other things) a failure to maximize shareholder return and giving the board of directors proper authority as his superior.