Carytown grocery store Ellwood Thompson’s was locally owned until its 2023 acquisition. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
Last week, customers entering Ellwood Thompson’s Carytown store were met with barren shelves. The stark visual for shoppers was a symbol of a much larger upheaval at the nearly four-decade-old local grocer. Now, a group of area farmers and other purveyors say they have gone months without receiving payment for their products from the store, which was acquired in 2023 by Healthier Choices Management Corp. and now operates under the spinoff Healthy Choice Wellness Corp. In response, some vendors have stopped deliveries, while others are weighing whether to do the same.
“We have not received a single payment since February,” says Nicole Broder, co-founder of Shine Farms in Mechanicsville, which has supplied Ellwood Thompson’s since 2020.
Broder notes that Shine Farms always valued Ellwood Thompson’s commitment to small producers. But as the recent growing season picked up, the farm’s accounts told a different story: months of unpaid invoices.
“The season gets going. Things get busy. Again, I’m not reconciling our books every week. But we start realizing, ‘Oh, we haven’t been paid for anything yet from Ellwood,’” she says.
The farm has experienced delayed payments from the store before. At the end of 2025, Broder says, Ellwood Thompson’s made a payment covering several months of outstanding invoices. Before the acquisition, she says, the farm typically received checks each month.
Shine Farms is not alone. Other farmers and small businesses in the area report similar problems, including Old Tavern Farm in Quinton, Richmond sausage maker The Mayor and Lakeside coffee company Recluse Roasting Project.
When Broder reached out to her direct contact at Ellwood Thompson’s, she says the employee “was shocked to find out that we weren’t getting paid. Obviously, she was very apologetic and concerned, but she sort of was like, ‘I have no control over this.’”
In early July, Broder contacted HCWC’s accounts department after multiple attempts and roughly six weeks without a response. She says they then received an email explaining that the company was switching payment software; the message contained no information on when payments would be sent.
In late July and early August, Broder began reaching out to fellow farmers who supplied Ellwood Thompson’s. What she heard was strikingly consistent.
“Everyone we messaged is like, ‘Yeah, we don’t get paid, either.’”
John Bryant, founder of Old Tavern Farm, says the store’s payment problems date back to the sale of the business. “They don’t pay me timely at all,” he says.
Bryant says his final payment for 2025 from Ellwood Thompson’s arrived Feb. 3 of this year. He typically invoices weekly. He received another payment April 1 covering six invoices, followed by a payment May 11 covering five more. He says invoices 12 through 34 remain unpaid.
“They’ve gone all of April, May, June, July, and now with no payment,” Bryant says. “There is no pattern to the payment. It’s kind of like they pay you when they decide to pay you.”
He says the store currently owes him nearly $8,500.
The issue has been slow to surface in part because summer is the farmers’ busiest time of year. When each day is spent tending fields, making deliveries and working markets, managing late payments often falls by the wayside.
“Accounts payable is exceedingly important, but it’s also one of those things where I’ve got to take time from growing stuff and harvesting to then sit down and be a bill collector,” Bryant says. “The time is limited to do it, and it’s kind of eye opening when I added it up for this year. I’d like to get that money, but this is the first time I’ve really had the time. We’re just so busy. It’s peak season.”
For vendors, the financial problem is complicated by what Ellwood Thompson’s has historically represented.
“I think this would be the theme in talking to other vendors to Ellwood … they were one of the originals, and they always embraced small local businesses and were willing to meet farms at a price point that they could hopefully thrive,” Bryant says. “I’ve got a lot of businesses that we do business with, but it would still hurt to lose Ellwood.”
That history makes the decision of whether to stop deliveries particularly difficult.
“That’s been the struggle for a few weeks,” Bryant says. “Do we say, ‘We can’t keep sending you food if you’re not going to pay?’”
Broder echoes his feelings.
“We can’t go on not getting paid, but we would like to continue to sell to them for a lot of reasons,” Broder says. “They’re one of our most reliable customers for a small farm. They’re one of our bigger accounts. It would be like a big deal to have this disappear from our weekly income stream.”
‘A Little Sticky’
The payment problems are only the latest sign of a much larger transformation at Ellwood Thompson’s.
Rick Hood founded the store in 1989 with then-partner Eric Walters. The grocer was originally known as City Market and was located at the corner of Patterson and Libbie avenues. In 1993, it was renamed and relocated to its current location at the edge of Carytown, where it quickly became known for its emphasis on organic, health-focused products and its support of small producers, farmers and food startups.
In 2023, the longtime independent was acquired. Its current parent company, HCWC, now operates 19 organic grocery stores in six states.
HCWC President and Chief Operating Officer Christopher Santi claims the company’s goal has been to acquire independent grocers and provide them with capital to grow. He says the company remains committed to its local vendors.
Santi rejects the idea that the initial acquisition fundamentally changed Ellwood Thompson’s. He says there has been no change in store-level management or operations.
“When we first acquired Ellwood Thompson’s a couple of years ago, there was the same concern,” he says. “Over the past couple of years, there’s been virtually zero change with the business. The only thing that’s changing is at the corporate level, not at the store level.”
Purveyors who have worked with Ellwood Thompson’s for many years, however, say the payment issues reflect a tangible change: a slow erosion of the local ecosystem that made the store so special.
The farmers interviewed say the new ownership shifted Ellwood’s payment system from checks to direct deposit after the 2023 acquisition. Broder describes a lengthy onboarding process and says the transition created confusion.
The businesses have also been dealing with unanswered questions for months, with emails bouncing back and directing them to other employees, shuffling them among various company contacts. On July 8, Broder says, she contacted HCWC regarding both 2025 and 2026 invoices. The next day, she received a generic response mentioning a change of accounting systems. She did not receive a response to follow-up messages from July 10 and 17.
On Aug. 11, Broder says she emailed Ellwood Thompson’s store manager Mike Holland, who was able to forward her requests and information to a vice president in HCWC’s accounts department, who emailed back the following week.
According to Broder, the farm’s records show that their invoices are roughly over 140 days overdue, with 15 outstanding invoices. She says the recent correspondence with HCWC did not address her concerns about invoices dating from late 2025 through January 2026, nor offer any exact insight about when they will actually get paid. The email did state that the “merger has impacted the company’s short term operating cash flow.”
Coupled with the empty shelves, the grocer’s financial and operational stability is a growing concern.
Santi says the recent disruption is connected to HCWC’s pending merger with Host Digital Infrastructure LLC.
“Over the past couple of months, as this was developing, we were not in the position. It was almost kind of like we shut down to get this merger done,” Santi says. “We anticipate that once the merger is consummated at the end of the month [that] through the capital infusion, we’ll be able to move forward, replenish the shelves, and it will be business as usual for Ellwood Thompson’s. It’s just been a little sticky over the last 30, 60, 90 [days], if you will.”
Recluse Roasting Project has stopped supplying Ellwood Thompson’s. Owners Jack Fleming and Aimee Biggerstaff say they are owed $4,500. They have not been paid since Feb. 3, when they received payment covering several invoices, and they have sent multiple emails.
Last month, they halted all coffee shipments to the grocer. On July 23, they received an email from a team member at Ellwood Thompson’s asking Recluse to resend the invoices, along with mentions of “corporate accounting dragging their feet.”
On Aug. 3, the company received an additional email from Ellwood Thompson’s new bulk buyer verifying whether the grocery store’s account was on hold and asking Recluse to resend overdue invoices. Fleming says he responded and told the buyer that they were holding off on a new order until their account was caught up. He sent a link to the 11 unpaid invoices; he still has not been paid.
Moseley’s Broadfork Farm has also experienced payment delays, yet co-owner Janet Aardema says their invoices are currently caught up. “I had to find new contacts in their corporate office and email them repeatedly before finally getting paid, but they paid and are current.”
For Kyle Morse of small-batch sausage company The Mayor, the payment issues are a recurring problem. He says he hasn’t been paid since February — with his final invoice issued in April — marking the second time he’s been left in limbo. In early 2025, Morse stopped deliveries to the store until they paid his overdue invoices; he has since stopped again.
According to Morse, there was a lot of back and forth.
“There was a lot of, ‘Oh, we’re talking to the bank,’ or ‘We have changed banks and are figuring out what the problem is,’” he says. “The same excuse just presented differently, and it would happen for months and then I wouldn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks, then I’d ask again and it would be the same.”
But Morse, along with others interviewed, says this is not a reflection of the employees at Ellwood Thompson’s.
“None of this should be a bad reflection on them. None of this happened before the new ownership took over. Ever since they took over, it’s been an ongoing payment issue.”
There have also been reports from farmers of produce sitting for days before reaching store shelves, adding to concerns about whether the relationship between Ellwood Thompson’s and its local suppliers can continue as it has in the past.
Attempts to reach Ellwood Thompson’s employees were not returned by press time.
Identity Crisis
The pending merger adds another layer of uncertainty to the store’s already unsettled future.
Recent SEC filings for Ellwood Thompson’s parent company Healthy Choice Wellness Corp. show the operation is in financial distress, reporting a net loss of nearly $7 million over just six months.
Under the proposed merger, Host Digital Infrastructure will gain control of approximately 96% of HCWC, according to an SEC filing. Shareholders will meet Aug. 27 to decide whether to approve the deal. Santi says the transaction will provide HCWC with a capital infusion.
If the deal is approved, the company behind 19 organic grocery markets, including Ellwood Thompson’s, will hand its reins to a data-center infrastructure business, an industry steeped in controversy. The outcome may determine whether the store can preserve its local roots under its new corporate ownership.
For Broder, the concern is rooted in what Shine Farms’ relationship with Ellwood Thompson’s once represented. She says she always appreciated how hard the store fought to support a diverse local farming community. But, for now, the decision regarding whether to continue to supply Ellwood Thompson’s is being forced.
“I think for us, at least on an individual level, we’re going to stop,” Broder says. “I think that we’ll just have to stop selling to them just for the sake of the principle. We can’t continue to send more produce out with no guarantee of being paid.
“I don’t think grocery stores are easy to run in the first place — I think that grocery stores that prioritize buying local and hosting responsible brands ... are even harder to run. And if you lose the trust of your customer base because of ownership, I can’t imagine it would be an easy road. But if I found out that the grocery store I shopped at wasn’t paying the people who brought them food, I’d be like, ‘OK, well, I'm not shopping there. I don’t want my money to go there.’”
