As three Di Bruno Bros. stores close, a sign of hope for the Ardmore location
Di Bruno's space in Ardmore will be redeveloped. Meanwhile, the high-end grocery company said 70% of the three shuttered stores' workers will remain.
As the final two of three Di Bruno Bros. stores to close this month approached their last days, the wind-down was visible on the shelves. Cheeses, meats, breads, and prepared foods vanished first, followed by deeply discounted packaged goods that remained.
The Di Bruno locations in Wayne and the Franklin Residences in Center City, at Ninth and Sansom Streets, will close permanently on Wednesday, with no immediate clarity about what comes next. (The company’s original Italian Market store and Rittenhouse Square shop remain open.)
The closing of Di Bruno’s Ardmore branch last Wednesday, however, is already reshaping the future of Suburban Square’s Ardmore Farmers Market, where the Italian-goods purveyor opened in 2011 and eventually became the dominant tenant.
Toward the end of its run, the Ardmore location of Di Bruno Bros. occupied more than half of the market’s stalls. Rather than replacing it with another large operator, the market will be reconfigured to accommodate multiple smaller food tenants, said Douglas Green, a principal at MSC Retail, which handles leasing for Kimco Realty Corp., which owns Suburban Square.
“Di Bruno’s just kind of got too big,” Green said. “It limited cuisine diversity and pushed them into specialty items and cuisines that weren’t really their core business.”
An MSC Retail brochure shows four available spaces ranging from roughly 600 to 800 square feet, several of them divisible. Existing vendors — including Stoltzfus Meats, Ardmore Produce, Ardmore Seafood, Malvern Buttery, Sushi Sei, Tabouli, and the Ultimate Bake Shoppe — would remain, with additional “future opportunity” areas identified near the dining zones.
“The idea is to break the space up into smaller units, create more cuisine diversity, and ideally replace the Italian specialty concept,” Green said.
Green said his firm is already negotiating with multiple potential occupants, including chefs and restaurant groups from Philadelphia interested in suburban expansions. “There’s been a tremendous amount of interest — honestly more than I ever would have imagined, and I’m not saying that in a sales-y way,” he said.
For customers, the swiftness of Di Bruno Bros.’ three-store shuttering has been striking.
Brendan Burland, an insurance consultant who lives in Bryn Mawr, stopped by the Wayne location Friday for lunch with a friend and found the bar closed and the shelves reduced to discounted goods.
“No bread, no meats, no fresh cheeses,” Burland said. “It was depressing — a total ghost town.”
Burland said the store’s restaurant program had been losing its spark even before the final weeks. “The bar menu had become less inspiring over the last few years,” he said. “It started to feel like, ‘Here’s some pizza and some sandwiches,’ instead of something interesting or unique.”
What he will miss most are the basics that made Di Bruno Bros. a destination. “Their product line was pretty substantial. My buddy and I even joked that we should become cheesemongers,” he said, adding “we know nothing about it other than we like to eat cheese.”
The retrenchment follows the 2024 acquisition of Di Bruno Bros. by Brown’s Super Stores, which owns a dozen ShopRite and Fresh Grocer stores in the region. Later that year, Wakefern Foods, a grocery co-op that includes Brown’s, obtained the Di Bruno’s trademark and branded products.
Sandy Brown, the company’s executive vice president, said when talks began with Di Bruno Bros. in 2023, it was facing “significant financial challenges” and was at risk of not being able to continue operating.
“We even stepped in ahead of the acquisition to help ensure they could get through the 2023 holiday season, because many suppliers had already begun limiting deliveries due to concerns about the company’s stability,” Brown said.
That disruption in supply contributed to declining sales and worsening store conditions, she said. “Our goal from day one has been to stabilize the business, protect the brand, and preserve an important part of Philadelphia’s history,” Brown said. “We believed — and still believe — that Di Bruno Bros. is worth saving.”
The move is a shift from the Brown’s company announcement in December 2024 that it planned to open an additional 12 to 15 Di Bruno stores in the coming decade.
Sandy Brown said the company decided to prioritize the “iconic” locations in the Italian Market and Rittenhouse “because these sites continue to anchor the brand.”
She said all 69 retail workers at the three closing stores were offered positions elsewhere within Di Bruno Bros. or at Brown’s Super Stores, with no loss of pay or benefits. About 70% are expected to remain, she said, while three supervisory positions were eliminated. Workers had complained on social media about the abruptness of the planned closings.
While plans are coming together for the Ardmore location, the future of the Wayne and Franklin spaces remains unresolved. A representative for Equity Retail Brokers said the Wayne space is not yet on the market. MSC Retail, which also handles commercial leasing at the Franklin location, said that space is also not yet being marketed.