Pusateri’s Fine Foods, a stalwart of upscale grocery shopping in Toronto, has abruptly closed its location at Bayview Village Shopping Centre without explanation. The company has also closed the grocery component of its Saks Food Hall downtown while shelving plans for a store in Little Italy.
The Bayview Village closure, which caught shoppers off guard this week, comes just months after Pusateri’s shuttered its Yorkville store, ending a two-decade presence in one of Toronto’s most affluent neighbourhoods.
Efforts to obtain clarity on the situation have yielded little information — Retail Insider called the Avenue Road store, which had no answers. A call to landlord QuadReal also provided more questions than answers.
Following publishing this article, Streets of Toronto confirmed that the Bayview Village Pusateri’s has closed permanently — and as well, plans for a location that was under construction in Little Italy in Toronto have also been shelved, despite ongoing construction.
Prior to the confirmation, Retail Insider noted Google indicating that the Bayview Village Pusateri’s location is now permanently closed.
It also appears that the grocery component to the Saks Food Hall in downtown Toronto is no longer operating, though vendors with concessions are currently selling according to a source.
The sudden closure of the Bayview Village Pusateri’s location — previously considered one of the company’s leading stores in terms of sales — has raised questions about the challenges facing high-end food retailers in an increasingly competitive and economically uncertain landscape. It also appears that there may be a bigger issue within Pusateri’s itself.
The upscale food market in Toronto has become increasingly crowded in recent years. Eataly, the Italian mega-market, has announced plans for its fourth location in the city, set to open in early 2025 at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre — and earlier this year, a smaller location opened south of Bayview Village at CF Shops at Don Mills.
Pusateri’s, founded in 1963 by Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Pusateri, has long been synonymous with gourmet food shopping in Toronto. The company’s transformation from a modest produce stand to a high-end grocery empire mirrored the city’s own evolution into a global culinary destination.
However, recent years have seen the company facing headwinds. In addition to the Yorkville and Bayview Village closures, Pusateri’s shuttered its Oakville location in 2018 after just two years of operation, and closed its food hall at Saks Fifth Avenue at CF Sherway Gardens in 2023.
The company had previously announced plans to open a new 10,000-square-foot store in Little Italy, touted as a return to its roots. However, that location, initially slated to open in the summer of 2023, has faced ongoing delays and now won’t be opening at all.
Given the information, we’ll follow up on this story when we learn more about what is happening with Pusateri’s Fine Foods.
They’ve also, as of the end of the business day on August 9th, closed the interior portion of their Queen Street Saks Food Hall. They’ve left the perimeter businesses (fritters, eclairs, noodle bar, poké, bahn mi, coffee shop, and pizza) running Monday to Friday. Everything is now closed on weekends. Rumours are that the family is fighting over their money.
as should italians do! this family has been greed since the in-laws THE TRUE PUSTAERI have been around
Eataly…? That spots for the pickings $$$$
No memo no info just decided to shut down doors.Very bad company.No respect to the staff!
Eataly works for reasons i simply don’t understand – it’s a weekend destination for hordes of people, but the overall quality is far below Eataly’s attention to presentation.
Pusateri’s strikes me as having overextended its reach – the Saks venture was dreary from the outset: who is food shopping in the below ground level of The Bay, and their prices were not an attraction.
I was a daily coffee bar habitue at the Yorkville store for the past 15 years, but a year or two pre-Covid, there was a marked deterioration of service, attention to keeping the store neat and tidy, and a revolving door of staff who rarely had the time to smile.
who were food shopping in the below ground level? well before covid … all the financial people were down there buying food and socializing. was very lively!