A local grocery store chain plans to close its only location in downtown Butler Saturday.

Friedman's Freshmarkets at 127 W. Brady St. will be closing at 6 p.m. Saturday. It will not open again anytime soon, according to the company's leadership.

The store is closing due to financial underperformance, according to Carole F. Bitter, president and CEO.

Bitter said the store's current model is not working, and it became too difficult to subsidize the struggling location, especially when grocery stores across the country are struggling.

“There have been 19 quarters of food deflations,” Bitter said. “It's never been seen before, this length of deflation or the strength of it.”

Food deflation cuts the cost of goods for consumers, but grocers struggle to turn a profit. Bitter said they had to make the tough call.

Despite losing the store, Bitter said the company will not have to lay off employees. She said so far every employee has agreed to work at another location.

Bitter said she and her management team helped facilitate this by meeting one-on-one with each employee to find the best fit. She said some employees did not have transportation, so they sat down and mapped out bus routes.

Bitter said the goal moving forward is to get each transferred employee acclimated to their new store, but the benefit is that she is bringing people already-trained into a new system.

“They're trained the way we like them to be,” she said.

Bitter said she hopes this will help make customers comfortable with using other stores in their chain, which are in Chicora, Butler Township and Saxonburg.

“As Butler's only remaining hometown grocer, we hope our customers will support us in our other stores — as we have supported the community in tens of thousands of different ways over 117 years,” she said.

Bitter's grandfather, Jacob Friedman, sold groceries on a pushcart after emigrating in 1900 to the U.S. from Austria-Hungary. He established his earliest stores in the West End in 1900, Lyndora in 1906 and on West Jefferson Street in 1918.

The Friedman family opened the Brady Street store in 1972, after buying the old Loblaw store from Del Farms. The building later caught fire in 1988, but it was rebuilt in 1989 and has been open since.

Mayor Tom Donaldson voiced his concerns Thursday about how the closing could affect the community.

“That's a major disappointment,” Donaldson said.

Donaldson said this will affect many Butler residents who do not have transportation and who walk to the store for their groceries.

“The concern I have is that we have a lot of people who don't have access to the other stores,” he said.

Donaldson said he understands business and why the store needs to close.

“I think Carole did everything humanly possible,” he said. “It's unfortunate, but Butler will survive.”

Bitter confirmed that they do not have any plans to sell the building at this time.

Bitter said helping customers get to their stores will become the next item on their agenda after getting their employees situated at their new stores.

Bitter said residents can use the bus stop by the Brady Street location to get to their location in Butler Township.

Bitter said this will be the first time in more than 117 years that the company will not have a location in downtown Butler. She said she has new ideas on new ways to make a store more sustainable in the area.

“We have a couple ideas — for down the road — for a new Brady Street Store format,” she said.

Bitter said getting a store back in downtown is important to her and the company.

“I think before I retire, we'll have another location in downtown Butler,” she said.