Did woke addytude lead to Di Bruno’s slump?

Last week the Inquirer carried a story that upscale gourmet grocery Di Bruno Bros. would be closing three of its five stores. The main explanation for the slimming down was to emphasize online sales. 

Monday it carried a second story, about how some customers steered away because of a decline in quality. The Inquirer cited online commentary about the quality of Di Bruno following an ownership stake was bought in 2024 by Brown’s Super Stores.

I have another theory.

It goes back to 2020, when many Center City stores, plus more in other neighborhoods, were raped by criminals taking advantage of the cover that the George Floyd protests gave them. The riots were enabled by Mayor Jim Kenney’s moronically woke decision to not call out the National Guard until after the riots had ravaged the city.

Chestnut and Walnut streets were particularly hard hit, cops were enormously outnumbered and thieves brazenly walked down streets with stolen goods in their arms. Many storefronts and windows were smashed, fires were set. As parts of Center City smoldered, overstressed cops were ordered to patrol the city on overtime.

In a spontaneous and friendly gesture, Di Bruno’s Chestnut Street store offered free lunch to on-duty cops. 

Within 48 hours, the owners retracted the offer.

Why?

Some Di Bruno employees objected to the policy and threatened to strike. The Inquirer story  did not say how many of the store’s employees threatened to strike.

The inmates had taken over the asylum. Their threat was decidedly anti-cop.

This would be like me threatening to strike my newspaper if it endorsed some politician I did not like, which was often.

The spineless Di Bruno owners crawled on their bellies with a cringeworthy statement about how sorry they were for the “insensitive” policy, saying it stands with the protestors against police brutality. No mention of the brutality committed by some of the protestors. The national riots caused up to $2 billion in damage and at least 42 deaths. There were no marches to denounce that violence.

This was a crazy moment in American history, where a genuine wrong — the accidental killing of Floyd (Derek Chauvin was convicted of unintentional second-degree murder) — became enmeshed with a mad rush to correct other racial wrongs.

In an orgy of self-flaggulation, major corporations threw multi millions of dollars at organizations — some good, others not — pledged to improve the lives of African-Americans. 

One avenue led to the wrong-headed (and politically stupid) Defund the Police movement, which probably influenced Di Bruno’s about-face. The woke employees managed to draw a line from Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis to a beat cop on a hot Philly street.

Di Bruno, in effect, declared itself to be anti-cop.

No surprise that the local Fraternal Order of Police Lodge Five put out a tweet that Philly police would be boycotting Di Bruno.

And they did. And so did others. Including me, who supports good cops, which most are.

Did that woke addytude lead to the closing of 60% of the gourmet stores?

I don’t know. It’s just a theory.