Foxtrot fans missing their morning fix of breakfast tacos and coffee, your wait is almost over.

The upscale Chicago-based convenience store and cafe chain that closed abruptly in April before filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy is set to reopen in the Gold Coast neighborhood Thursday, the first of more than a dozen former Foxtrot locations slated to welcome back customers by spring.

Backed by a New York-based investment firm, Foxtrot co-founder and former CEO Mike LaVitola is relaunching and enhancing the core concept, unfettered by the debt, aggressive expansion and a failed merger that brought down the chain after a decade.

“The whole kind of founding principle was finding the best things in and around Chicago and getting them all into one place,” Foxtrot Chairman LaVitola told the Tribune Tuesday. “If anything, the reopening of Foxtrot is a big chance to double down on that.”

In addition to the signature breakfast tacos and specialty coffees, the new Foxtrot lunch menu will feature items such as panini sandwiches and salad bowls, with fresh-baked cookies and other offerings throughout the day.

Ingredients for all menu items have been upgraded, LaVitola said, with faster service engineered for lunchtime fare.

LaVitola co-founded Foxtrot in 2014, based on a concept for a high-end, locally sourced convenience store he developed while pursuing his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Launched as an online service, Foxtrot opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in the West Loop the following year.

Expansion followed as the convenience stores gained traction, with its one-hour delivery service flourishing during the pandemic. But like many startup founders, LaVitola was ousted as CEO by the company’s board in early 2023, as Foxtrot’s steep growth trajectory proved unsustainable in the post-pandemic retail landscape.

One year later, Foxtrot was out of business.

The stores closed suddenly in April, four months after Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market, another Chicago grocery startup, merged under a new corporate banner, Outfox Hospitality, with plans to leverage synergies and continue to expand both brands.

Foxtrot had grown to 33 locations, including 15 in Chicago, with the rest in Texas and Washington, D.C., when it shut down. Dom’s, a downsized neighborhood market concept launched in 2021 by longtime grocery executive Bob Mariano, had two Chicago locations and its own ambitious expansion plans.

Workers at all of the locations were immediately let go, some mid-shift, spawning lawsuits that their dismissals violated required federal and state warning notices. The new Foxtrot owner is not a party to those lawsuits.

In May, Outfox filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a Delaware court. The assets of Foxtrot were purchased at auction for $2.2 million by Further Point Enterprises, an early investor in the startup, with plans to relaunch the brand. The first move for the new owner was to bring back LaVitola.

While LaVitola told the Tribune in June he planned to open a dozen former stores this summer, the relaunch is moving at a much slower pace.

First up is the location at 23 W. Maple St. in the Gold Coast, which will open its doors Thursday with free coffee from 6 to 10 a.m. Foxtrot plans to reopen its Old Town store next, followed by locations at Wrigley Field and Willis Tower before year’s end, a company spokesperson said.

Foxtrot hired back several former employees, including the store manager, at the Gold Coast location, a blueprint LaVitola plans to follow at the Old Town store and future reopenings.

Overall, there are plans to reopen 11 previous Foxtrot locations in Chicago and three in Dallas by spring. Outfox let the store leases lapse, but LaVitola renegotiated leases for all 14 stores. He declined to disclose the terms of the new leases.

The former Pilsen commissary, however, where 50 workers made food items for the Foxtrot stores, was not among the assets purchased by the new company, which is switching to an in-store food preparation model.

LaVitola said many longtime local vendors have returned to the fold as well, despite some being owed money by the bankrupt predecessor company. Getting their products back on the shelves may well be crucial for Foxtrot 2.0 to regain its mojo, and its customer base.

During the rapid expansion under the previous owners, LaVitola said Foxtrot lost sight of the local product platform that made the stores so unique for vendors and customers, offering everything from specialty doughnuts and ice cream to bread.

“It’s really doubling down on what grew the company for those first eight years, which is passion around merchandising,” LaVitola said. “That’s what Foxtrot was all about. I think the company lost that, and now’s our chance to make it happen again.”

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.