LAWRENCE — The suspended Market Basket executives wear suits in keeping with the company culture they’ve known most of their lives at the New England supermarket chain.
Tom Gordon and Joe Schmidt sit beside each other and lean forward in a Lawrence coffee shop.
They have grocery bagger hands and would be equally comfortable wearing the signature red jackets seen on Market Basket managers.
Gordon, 64, grew up in Methuen and at age 14 started bagging groceries at the Salem, New Hampshire, Market Basket. He later transferred to the Methuen store by The Loop.
He has worked his way through the ranks reaching grocery director 10 years ago and now has 50 years with the company.
He wants to work another decade.
Schmidt, 53, grew up in Danvers and at age 14 started bagging groceries at the Danvers Market Basket.
He also climbed the regional chain’s ranks to director of operations and now has 39 years with the company.
And, he says, he wants to work another 15 or 20 years.
“We both stocked an aisle, we both ran the checkout, we both washed the floor at night,” Gordon says. “There isn’t any position that we would ask anybody to be in that we haven’t already done ourselves.”
They’ve been a team much of their lives.
Schmidt, as a young man, worked under Gordon in the Danvers store.
Schmidt says Gordon was a legendary stamper, the fastest back in the days before UPC codes.
He’d slice the top from a carton box of cans, and bang, bang, bang ink-stamp the price on the lids and set them on the shelf in what seemed like a single movement.
“Before I knew it, I turned around, he was gone,” Schmidt says, “on to the next aisle.”
Until three weeks ago – when they were suspended – they consulted with each other daily, their offices located next door to one another inside the company’s headquarters in Tewksbury.
In spite of their time together, they still use the formal address of mister, as in Mr. Gordon or Mr. Schmidt, when they refer to each other.
They refer to the chain’s suspended CEO as Mr. Demoulas, though many know of him as Artie T.
There’s a dynamic between Gordon and Schmidt, a meshing of formal and informal, of respect and familiarity, that might be part of the appeal the stores hold on their customers. A personal professionalism that resonates well with New Englanders.
Bargains help, too.
The stores’ once signature free coffee – customers helped themselves to small Styrofoam cups, some slopping coffee on the floors – is long gone. The rotisserie chickens priced under $5, the deals on canned goods, and the treasures hiding in plain sight remain.
Gordon cracked a small smile when Schmidt recalled his prowess with his gold-ink stamper, but neither of them smile when they recall Wednesday, May 28, 2025.
The day of the ouster
They knew something was up when unfamiliar faces, apparently a security team, showed up early at the Tewksbury headquarters parking lot and walked with two board members into the lobby to talk to Arthur T. Demoulas.
That was odd, not in keeping with company culture, Schmidt says.
“It was almost like people storming the castle,” Schmidt explains.
The now-suspended executives – Arthur T. Demoulas, his two children Madeline and Telemachus, Gordon, Schmidt and Gerard Lewis – were given letters explaining their new status.
Schmidt asked to talk to the board and did so, seeking an explanation for why he was being benched.
“The response that I got from Jay Hachigian was it’s all there in the letter,” Schmidt says. “That just told me everything I needed to know about them and what their agenda is.”
Gordon didn’t receive his letter of suspension until later in the day after they had talked to him about working with them to continue the business.
He told them he wouldn’t do that and got his letter at about 4:45 p.m. after everybody else, Gordon says.
A spokesperson for Arthur T. Demoulas, Justine Griffin, who was also at the coffee shop in Lawrence, says Artie T.’s suspension as president and CEO of Market Basket is “a farcical cover for a hostile takeover.”
The company’s executive committee, Hachigian, Steven Collins and Michael Keyes, three of the four board members, say the suspensions will remain in effect during an investigation into the CEO’s conduct by the Boston law firm Quinn Emanuel.
The firm will review whether Arthur T. Demoulas and others were planning a work stoppage in retaliation for the board seeking basic oversight and access to employees.
A spokesperson for the board says this is about Arthur T. Demoulas not wanting to cooperate with its members. It’s about him not showing them a budget for five years; him making major investments without consulting the board; and him not wanting to be part of a well-planned succession plan.
Board member Michael Keyes said in a May 29 interview: “We get no notification, we’re not included at all in the process.”
Furthermore, he said, the Demoulas family wrote the bylaws and signed the documents that created the board and grant it oversight.
“Now you have a minority shareholder who does not want to cooperate with the board,” Keyes said.
Conflicting viewpoints
The board was formed after the resolution of the Demoulas family fight in 2014, a fray into which the public and company employees rallied around Arthur T. Demoulas.
Artie T.’s side of the family, he and his three sisters, bought the 50.5% shares in the company they did not own from their cousin Arthur S. Demoulas’s side of the family for $1.6 billion.
The debt on the sum, backed by Demoulas Super Markets Inc.-owned real estate – the company owns the land and malls where most of its 90 stores stand – and financial institutions were recently paid off or largely paid off.
Artie T. owns 28% of the company, and his three sisters each own a 20% share, with the remaining 12% in trust for grandchildren.
Griffin says the board’s assertions about her boss are far off the mark.
Starting with the succession plan, Griffin says Demoulas knows the board of directors appoints the CEO.
They asked him for his recommendation and he recommended his son and daughter, in a co-directors’ role, based on their experience with the company.
Griffin said Artie T. has consistently provided the board with day-to-day budgetary information focusing on the near-term more than a Fortune 500 plan that looks five years out.
“Every 12 weeks they get a very complete package of operating budget and year-over-year tracking, tracking against certain competitors,” Griffin says.
That approach has served Market Basket well over the years, she says.
When it comes to investments in real estate, Arthur scouts locations, giving general geographical information to the board about proposed sites, as has long been the practice, since word of Market Basket’s interest in buying real estate would increase its price.
Furthermore, Arthur Demoulas has been a proponent of investing in the future of the company.
This includes opening new stores or improving existing locations.
It costs roughly $30 million to open a new store, she says.
Now, with the debt on the $1.6 billion 2014 buyout all or nearly complete, more money is available and the sisters want more of the profits paid out to the families each year, Griffin believes.
Last year, after taxes, each of the four ownership families received tens of millions of dollars, she says.
“So, very similar to what happened in 2014, the non-working family wanted more money distributions versus plowing it back into the company,” Griffin says.
She says Arthur believes it’s important for the business, for the workforce, to provide more opportunities for advancement in new stores.
In the meantime, the Emanuel investigation continues.
Spare time and high hopes
Gordon and Schmidt say they were both paid for June at the beginning of the month.
Where do they shop for food?
Gordon says they are not allowed on the property. He went to Hannaford for groceries last time shopping.
Schmidt’s wife went shopping at the Epping Market Basket a few times and also to competitor stores.
Both of the executives don’t know what to do with themselves after working at Market Basket for so many years.
Schmidt, who lives with his wife and kids in Nashua, is putting miles on his walking shoes.
Gordon, who lives in Danville, gets up at 3:45 a.m. and later, putters around the yard.
He is running out of leaves to pick up and is driving his wife crazy, he says.
Both want to go back to work under Arthur T. Demoulas.
It’s the culture they know and the culture they want to see continue.
Somewhere out there is a 15-year-old kid at a Market Basket thinking this might be his or her future, Schmidt says.
“Getting to understand people like Mr. Gordon’s dedication to the company, along with many others that I have worked with along the way, gave you an appreciation, to say this is a really special place,” Schmidt says.
“This isn’t just a regular nine-to-five job,” he adds. “This is a place where not only do you do a job, but it’s gratifying to you as a person, you become a part of something greater.”