Dean & Deluca's St. Helena Store is Shuttered

The sign taped on the glass door at St. Helena’s Dean & DeLuca on Friday was both right and wrong.

It said the St. Helena luxury gourmet food and wine store was closed Thursday and Friday for the July 4th holiday.

On Friday, however, an operator at the Wichita, Kansas headquarters of Dean & DeLuca, who identified herself only as Nikki, confirmed that the St. Helena store is permanently closed. It is unknown how many employees are affected.

On Friday afternoon, Google also reported Dean & DeLuca is permanently closed.

The closing confirmed rumors of the store’s demise, in part because vendors haven’t been paid. Earlier this year, there was talk that the St. Helena store was empty of both wines for sale and customers, although during a recent afternoon visit, there were several customers at the deli ordering sandwiches. There were a few Napa Valley wines to buy in that section of the store, although the wine shelves were nowhere near full.

Dean & DeLuca is located at 607 South St. Helena Highway, several miles south of downtown St. Helena.

According to a May 2018 Bisnow Media story, Dean & DeLuca continued to shrink its brick-and-mortar stores, from 42 to 18 across the United States and battled lawsuits from suppliers claiming they haven’t been paid. New York City bakery Elenis says it was owed $86,000 for cookies sold to the store and Ceci Cela Patisserie saying it is owed $70,000.

Thailand’s Pace Development Corporation bought the Dean & DeLuca chain in November 2014 for $140 million. The purchase included the supply chain and operations of 11 outlets and two commissaries in the United States as well as licensing agreements covering 31 countries.

At that time, Sorapoj Techakraisri, CEO of Pace said the iconic brand has “extraordinary potential for rapid growth globally. We expect to open hundreds of new stores in the next two years to add to the current 42 stores and to increase our global footprint from eight countries to more than 15 countries through licensing and our own investments.”

Giorgio DeLuca and Joel Dean opened the original 2,600 square-foot store in September 1977 in SoHo, an artist and warehouse district in lower Manhattan.

bummer! right next to Hall Winery

another one bites the dust :frowning:

That sucks. Loved stopping in during Napa visits to grab a coffee in the morning, grab a cheese plate and snacks during the day, peruse the wine area, indulge in some macaroons, etc.

And now I won’t be able to anymore. This isn’t supposed to happen in the ‘greatest economy ever’. Maybe Jerome P and the Fed can cut rates and save D&D?

Dean & Deluca has/had stores in airports outside the USA. Expansion was looking good and successful but now it is a question of corporate greed without true knowledge of the business and its operation. We’ve seen the demise or devaluation of businesses including wineries that are purchased by investment firms or groups that chase the dollar without knowledge of the actual operation and costs.

Sounds like they overexpanded. It’s a common story (e.g., the Fairway chain around the NY area, and Balducci’s/Sutton Place Market in DC and NY). And it’s a difficult time for retailing generally.

The original NYC store was famous in its day. But by the early 2000s it had become sort of glitzy. The shop on Broadway in SoHo is huge, but the last couple of times I was there – probably 15 years ago – everything was either pedestrian or overpriced, or both. I haven’t been back since. Of course, we’re spoiled in NY with good food sources, and I live near Zabar’s, Citarella and the original Fairway, so there’s no reason to schlepp to SoHo to pay more for the same things.

Greed isn’t the problem. It’s ignorance, as you say, and unrealistic plans. And foreign companies and investors have a bad record of misjudging the US market (e.g., Majestic buying Liquor Barn; Daimler Benz buying Chrysler; Sony buying Columbia Pictures; Tesco trying to break into the California grocery market).

Sad. As a New Yorker, I’ve seen them for many years. They were pretty revolutionary back in the day, but haven’t been very relevant here for quite some time. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone mention them.

I worked in Soho late 80s and we would run to their original shop for such good food all the time … and birthday cakes with the most amazing floral hand crafted decorations that I dream of to this day. Sad to see them go this way.

IIRC, Pax used to run the wine department there before starting his label . . .

Bummer - hope those that are owed get paid.

Cheers.

A friend of mine got some of the inaugural SE for $35/bottle from the Napa D&D, before the Parker review came out.

It was a nice spot in the mid-90’s.

Saw this coming when my wife and visited Napa this past April. The store had hardly any inventory compared to previous years. Looked they were just trying to run out current inventory.

It wasn’t half as good as Sunshine Grocery anyway.

The Dean & Deluca near us closed last year. It had been there since 1997.

was there in mid June. Little wine, cheese and meat selection depleted. Bread was stale on sandwiches and vowed not to return. Oakville Grocer it is

Yeah - I remember when they started. That was before the Fancy Food Show and all the specialty stores. There were only the old time Italian places in Little Italy and while D&D was in a sense derived from those, they made the ethnic selections more upscale by playing down the ethnicity and playing up the gourmet aspect. Never even knew there were any in California. But there’s a lot of competition, not only in NYC these days. Hard to compete with places like Eataly, which seem to be opening all over, and the various food courts in many cities.

Yeah, those 'Mericans are hard to figure out with their twisted politics and laws and… [cheers.gif]

I had no idea there were so many D&D’s around the world. I’ve only known the NYC and DC stores.

Didn’t there used to be one on Madison Ave near the Park?

When I lived in SoHo in my youth, I used to go by the D&D occasionally. I do remember it being a bit expensive for me though.

It was too expensive even by Napa standards.

Shortly after we opened our store, D & D contacted us to see if we could provide them cigars cheaper than their current supplier. We were cheaper and provided their cigars for a short time until a new store manager was hired. Their cigar prices were high, like everything else in the store, but back then the deli was hopping, hard to find wines were on the shelves and the staff was very competent.