TEWKSBURY, MA – JULY 25: Elizabeth Cleary, of Billerica, Mass., was one of the employees and customers holding a rally in support of Arthur T. Demoulas and Market Basket. (Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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.
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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.
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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.
