(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
The PDT Market reopened after a short closing to regroup.
PDT Market has reopened on Railroad Place, did not have an exodus of staff, and Chef Adam Foti told FoothillsBusinessDaily.com that the story we posted earlier this week was incorrect. He called it "salacious."
“We did more business than expected” during their first week of operation, Foti said in an interview at the market April 6.
“We did a soft opening on purpose. We didn’t do a grand opening because we weren’t sure what the week would look like,” he said.
When the staff reached the weekend they realized that they had run out of some food, did not have enough people on staff, and changed the SKUs — the scanner codes — on thousands of items. Marketing director Jen Hull said they also shifted prices on the hot bar and cold bar items and reordered some produce.
“We had to reassess some of the things we were doing,” Foti said, adding later that “Anyone who’s in business should do what we do” in terms of analysis and changing as necessary.
PDT’s marketing director Jen Hull said of the multi-day shut-down, “It’s a good problem to have.”
The popularity was much higher than expected and they have interviewed and on-boarded about 10 or 15 more staff. All the stations in the market today had staff. They were lucky that the market was as popular as it was during the first week, she said.
Foti said they did fire one person and another may have left with that person, but there was no mass exodus as FoothillsBusinessDaily.com had reported. The reasons they gave for the closing on their website and social pages were accurate, he said.
Included in that posting: “Continuing to meet and exceed the expectations we've set for our brand is our number one priority. For this reason, we will be taking a few days to close the store and regroup with our teams…We’re looking forward to a few days together to ensure our customers stay happy and feel taken care of. Thank you for understanding, we'll see you soon!”
Editor’s note: We moved too quickly on our first story and should have taken more time to report. We relied on an email that we should not have relied upon. We regret and apologize for our error.