Good morning, Chicago.
A little over nine years ago, Javier Mancera landed a job at a commissary to supply a startup of boutique convenience stores in Chicago. It seemed promising, he recalled.
And it was. He was quickly tasked with hiring more workers as Foxtrot became known as an upscale grocer and cafe chain based in Chicago, which later expanded to Texas and Washington, D.C. That was until Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market abruptly shuttered in April before filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, causing chaos amongst their customers and leaving hundreds of their workers suddenly without a job.
The stores in Chicago were all located on the city’s North Side. The commissary, however, was on the Southwest Side, predominantly staffed by Mexican immigrant laborers like Mancera, who never set foot in one of the boutique stores.
As a co-founder of Foxtrot and new investors plan to reopen about a dozen stores this fall, Mancera and most of the other 50 former immigrant workers who worked at the commissary continue to struggle to find new jobs to make ends meet. Mancera said that his quest for employment has been stymied by few opportunities, with competition from newly arrived migrants who are willing to work for extremely low wages and those who have legal work permits.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Laura Rodríguez Presa.
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