Blue Goose Market closing its doors after more than 90 years in business

After being in business for more 90 years, the Blue Goose Market in St. Charles has announced it is closing.

Blue Goose Market President and CEO Paul Lencioni said a number of factors are contributing to the store’s closing, including the pandemic and supply chain issues. And like other businesses across the nation, Blue Goose Market is experiencing an employee shortage.

“When you’re small, you just are what you are,” Lencioni said. “I’m sure things are going to be great in the supermarket industry after everything fixes itself. But you don’t have any safety net when you’re small.”

A date for when the store will close has not yet been set. Lencioni said he is working on selling the store.

“I’m doing everything I can to bring a great supermarket to St. Charles,” he said.

In 1928, Annunciata “Nancy” Lencioni – his great-grandmother – opened the Blue Goose Fruit Market in what had been Gartner’s Bakery, 201 W. Main St. The store moved to its current location at 300 S. Second St. in downtown St. Charles in 2008.

A deal to sell the store to a grocery chain fell through.

“It wasn’t the right timing for them,” Lencioni said.

Blue Goose was facing its share of obstacles even before the pandemic. In July 2019, Lencioni held a press conference in front of the store to announce that Blue Goose was fighting for its survival in the face of the competitive grocery industry.

But Lencioni, who lives in St. Charles and was elected to the St. Charles City Council last year, is looking at the store’s closing as a celebration of the store’s tenacity.

“Blue Goose gave everything it had to give to St. Charles,” he said. ‘So I don’t want to think of it as a tragedy. It’s just we’re in a different world.”